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20 years ago, you discovered music on the FM dial. End of story. Now there's an uncharted frontier of outlaw torrents, renegade bloggers, on-demand gold miners, and fur-trapping radios. The zeitgeist has splintered, and there's no piecing it back together. And I think we're doing just fine without the robber barons of old.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/G77nClGGD4A/

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mafgeogi · Feb. 27, 2013

Feb. 27, 2013 ? New research led at the University of Leicester reveals that individuals at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes would benefit from being told to sit less and move around more often- rather than simply exercising regularly. The experts suggest that reducing sitting time by 90 minutes in total per day could lead to important health benefits.

Currently, at risk patients are advised to engage in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) for at least 150 mins per week. But the new study published in Diabetologia (The journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes) suggests that patents should in fact be advised to reduce their sedentary time (time spent moving very little or not at all, for example sitting or lying down).The research was led by Joseph Henson and colleagues from the Diabetes Research Unit, University of Leicester and National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Leicester Loughborough Diet, Lifestyle and Physical Activity Biomedical Research Unit (BRU), UK.

Henson and colleagues analysed patients from two studies: 153 from project STAND (Sedentary Time and Diabetes study, mean age 33 years, 29% men) and the Walking Away from Diabetes study (mean age 64 years, 65% men). The team examined the extent to which sedentary time, breaks in sedentary time, MVPA and total physical activity were independently associated with cardiometabolic risk factors in a population with known risk factors for type 2 diabetes. Accelerometers were used to assess sedentary time, MVPA, and total physical activity. Breaks in sedentary time were defined as a transition from a sedentary to an active state.

The researchers found that for these patients with known risk factors for type 2 diabetes recruited from primary care, sedentary time was detrimentally associated with 2 h glucose, triacylglycerol and HDL-cholesterol, independent of measured confounders. These results remained significant after further adjustment for MVPA and adiposity.

Furthermore, the findings were consistent across groups with diverse age ranges, providing evidence that the negative consequences of excess sedentary time exist across young to old adults. Interestingly, sedentary time was shown to have stronger associations with several important cardiometabolic markers (2 h glucose, triacylglycerol and HDL-cholesterol) compared with total physical activity and MVPA, after adjustment for each other and other important confounders.

"These studies provide preliminary evidence that sedentary behaviour may be a more effective way to target the prevention of type 2 diabetes, rather than just solely focusing on MVPA. Moreover, sedentary time occupies large portions of the day, unlike MVPA," says Henson.

He adds that the new data raise questions regarding the possible prescription of optimal daily movement for health. He concludes: "Diabetes and cardiovascular prevention programmes concentrating solely on MVPA may overlook an area that is of fundamental importance to cardiometabolic health. Along with messages related to accumulating at least 150 min/week of MVPA, which form the cornerstone of diabetes prevention programmes, such interventions may be more effective still if individuals are further encouraged to simply sit less and move more, regardless of the intensity level."

He concludes: "This approach requires a paradigm shift, so that individuals at high risk of developing type 2 diabetes think about the balance of sedentary behaviour and physical activity throughout the day."

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Diabetologia, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

by J. Henson, T. Yates, S. J. H. Biddle, C. L. Edwardson, K. Khunti, E. G. Wilmot, L. J. Gray, T. Gorely, M. A. Nimmo, M. J. Davies. Associations of objectively measured sedentary behaviour and physical activity with markers of cardiometabolic health. Diabetologia, 2013 DOI: 10.1007/s00125-013-2845-9

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/most_popular/~3/RLGotTG2CO0/130227183526.htm

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BAMAKO, Mali (AP) ? A suicide car bombing killed six government allies in the northern city of Kidal, as French confirm that they are engaged in heavy fighting in northern Mali.

The suicide bomber exploded his vehicle Tuesday evening at a checkpoint at an entrance to Kidal, said Ag Alghabas Intalla, a leader of the Islamic Movement of Azawad, or MIA, reached by phone in Kidal. He said he counted six dead and others wounded. The MIA group is fighting with the Malian army and French troops against Islamic extremists.

Responsibility for the suicide attack has not been claimed, but it is suspected to be the work of the Islamic extremists of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO.

French troops are involved in "very violent fighting" in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains of northeastern Mali, said France's defense minister Tuesday. Jean-Yves Le Drian said that it's too early to talk about a quick French pullout from Mali, despite the growing cost of the intervention.

The French intervention in Mali has cost more than ?100 million ($133 million) since it started Jan. 11, said Le Drian on France's RTL radio.

"We are now at the heart of the conflict," in protracted fighting against Islamic extremist rebels in the Ifoghas mountains, Le Drian said.

While some expected the 4,000-strong French force to pull out next month, Le Drian said he couldn't talk about a quick withdrawal while the mountain fighting goes on. A clash in the area killed 23 soldiers from neighboring Chad last week, according to French President Francois Hollande, who expressed condolences to his Chadian counterpart.

Soldiers from Chad and a few other African countries have joined the French-led operation to help Mali's weak military push back the Islamic extremists who had imposed harsh rule on northern Mali and started moving southward toward the capital, Bamako, last month.

Ag Ghali's armed extremists conquered much of northern Mali after a military coup in Mali's capital, aided by al-Qaida's North Africa wing. In Timbuktu, they imposed strict Shariah law and forced thousands to flee; others were tortured and executed. But the French-led intervention in January brought the Islamic radicals to quit the northern cities of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal and retreat to mountainous hideouts near the Algeria border.

In the first weeks of the campaign, French and Malian forces easily took back cities in northern Mali. But the fighting is rougher now that it has reached more remote terrain in the mountains of the southern Sahara.

At the United Nations in New York, a top U.N. humanitarian official said Tuesday that as security improves in Mali, the world must seize the moment to deliver much-needed humanitarian aid.

John Ging, a senior humanitarian affairs official who just visited Mali, said that country's northern region is stabilizing but needs help re-opening schools, markets and health clinics. The U.N. is appealing for $373 million in aid, but has only received $17 million.

Even before fighting erupted last year among government forces, Taureg rebels and radical Islamists, Ging said Mali was suffering from the severe food crisis that has hit Africa's arid Sahel region.

Ging said more than 430,000 Malians have been displaced.

On Tuesday, the Obama administration imposed sanctions on an Islamic rebel leader whose extremist group seized much of northern Mali last year and prompted the French military intervention. The United States State Department designated Iyad Ag Ghali, head of the Islamic group Ansar Dine, a global terrorist. The action blocks any assets he holds in the U.S. and prohibits Americans from doing business with him.

The United Nations also added Ag Ghali to its global sanctions list.

___

Charlton reported from Paris. Associated Press writers Bradley Klapper contributed from Washington and Ron DePasquale from the United Nations in New York.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mali-6-killed-bomb-fighting-rages-north-113402308.html

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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The top Republican lawmaker in charge of writing the House version of an immigration reform bill expressed a willingness to offering a path to legality for illegal immigrants already living within the U.S. He stopped short, however, of describing the details of how the provisions would work.

Virginia Republican Rep. Bob Goodlatte, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday he's "open" to re-examing federal immigration laws that currently offer no option for illegal immigrants who seek legality that doesn't involve first returning to their home countries.

"We're open to the idea that the large number of people who are not here lawfully are not a good thing to have," Goodlatte told reporters on Wednesday during a meeting sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. "Focusing on where we can find that common ground on legal status would be a good step."

The House and Senate are currently crafting proposals to overhaul federal immigration laws, taking early steps for what is expected to be a months-long legislative process. In January, a bipartisan group of senators outlined a series of principles they hope will guide the process in the upper chamber, and Goodlatte said he was meeting regularly with a similar bipartisan group in the House. The judiciary committees in both the House and Senate are conducting ongoing hearings on key parts of the bills, which lawmakers expect to introduce to their chambers by spring with a vote planned by July.

Goodlatte, who worked as an immigration lawyer before joining the House, told National Public Radio in an interview last week that he opposes offering "a path to citizenship" to illegal immigrants as part of a reform package, but he moved to clarify his remarks on Wednesday by saying "we have to" allow "those living in the shadows" to "participate in our society."

"Everybody has a different definition about what a pathway to citizenship is. To me, rather than getting bogged down in semantics, we ought to look at what actually would enable us to find common ground and pass legislation. That's a difficult thing by itself," he said. "There's a broad spectrum between deportation and a special pathway to citizenship to find a way to bring people out of the shadows and give them legal status to allow them to be better able to participate in our society, and we should be focused there and recognize that we have to do that."

While Goodlatte was short on details?he said he wants to give House members more time to learn about and debate the issue?he did say that a robust guest-worker program would be "crucial" for any final bill. For now, he said, it would be better for the debate to continue within the committee.

"Rather than negotiate those concerns in public, I think it's better to let the process work and see what kind of consensus we can develop," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/key-house-republican-open-path-legality-illegal-immigrants-183543080--politics.html

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Posted on 27/02/2013 by nerida | Tagged 2013, aboriginal, indigenous news, Indigenous broadcasting,, CAAMA Radio, Cricket, Cricket Australia, imparja cup, indigenous, Indigenous broadcasting, indigenous news, Islanders, Mick Rees, Nerida Currey, Regional Manager Sport and Recreation, Tiwi, Tiwi Islands, Tiwi Islands Shire Council |

Nerida Currey caught up with Mick Rees during the Imparja Cup week, to speak about the Tiwi Islands Imparja Cup cricket team, where sports and cricket is at on the islands, and how beneficial sport and recreation is for the community?s well-being.

Mick is the Regional Manager for Sport and Recreation for the Tiwi Islands Shire Council.

27.2.13 Mick Rees and Nerida Imparja Cup

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Source: http://caama.com.au/sport-on-the-tiwi-islands

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Police in inflatable rubber boats shoot at a shark off Muriwai Beach near Auckland, New Zealand, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, as they attempt to retrieve a body following a fatal shark attack. Police said a man was found dead in the water after being "bitten by a large shark." (AP Photo/Ross Land) NEW ZEALAND OUT, NO SALES

In this aerial photo, emergency vehicles are parked at Muriwai Beach near Auckland, New Zealand, Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, following a fatal shark attack. Police said a man was found dead in the water Wednesday afternoon after being "bitten by a large shark." Police and surf lifesavers recovered the man's body. The police statement said Muriwai Beach near the city of Auckland has been closed. (AP Photo/New Zealand Herald, Chris Gorman) NEW ZEALAND OUT, AUSTRALIA OUT

Muriwai Beach near Auckland, New Zealand, is seen from the air Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, following a fatal shark attack. Police said a man was found dead in the water Wednesday afternoon after being "bitten by a large shark." Police and surf lifesavers recovered the man's body. The police statement said Muriwai Beach near the city of Auckland has been closed. (AP Photo/New Zealand Herald, Chris Gorman) NEW ZEALAND OUT, AUSTRALIA OUT

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) ? A shark possibly 14 feet long killed a swimmer near a popular New Zealand beach on Wednesday, then disappeared after police attempting to save the man fired gunshots at the enormous predator.

Muriwai Beach near Auckland was closed after the fatal attack, one of only about a dozen in New Zealand in the past 180 years.

Pio Mose, who was fishing at the beach, told The New Zealand Herald he saw the swimmer struggle against the "huge" shark. He told the man to swim to the rocks, but it was too late.

"All of a sudden there was blood everywhere," Mose said. "... I was shaking, scared, panicked."

Police Inspector Shawn Rutene said in a statement that the swimmer, was about 200 meters (650 feet) offshore when the shark attacked. He said police went out in inflatable surf-lifesaving boats and shot at the shark, which they estimate was 12 to 14 feet long.

"It rolled over and disappeared," Rutene said, without saying whether police are certain that they killed the creature.

Police recovered the body of the swimmer. The Herald reported that he was Adam Strange, a 46-year-old television and short film director, and that his family issued a statement expressing their shock and requesting privacy.

About 200 people had been enjoying the beach during the Southern Hemisphere summer at the time of the attack. Police said Muriwai and other beaches nearby have been closed until further notice.

Police did not say what species of shark was involved in the attack. Clinton Duffy, a shark expert with the Department of Conservation, said New Zealand is a hotspot for great white sharks, and other potentially lethal species also inhabit the waters.

Attacks are rare. Duffy estimated that only 12 to 14 people have been killed by sharks in New Zealand since record-keeping began in the 1830s.

"There are much lower levels of shark attacks here than in Australia," he said. "It's possibly a function of how many people are in the water" in New Zealand's cooler climate.

He said that during the Southern Hemisphere summer, sharks often come in closer to shore to feed and to give birth, although that doesn't necessarily equate to a greater risk of attack.

"Ninety-nine percent of the time they ignore people," he said. "Sometimes, people get bitten."

Around the world, sharks attacked humans 80 times last year, and seven people were killed, according to the University of Florida's International Shark Attack File. The death toll was lower than it was in 2011 but higher than the average of 4.4 from 2001 to 2010.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-02-27-AS-New-Zealand-Shark-Attack/id-4ce896f7f3ab4102982457c8026d7359

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Christopher Bodeen , The Associated Press ? ? ? 3 hrs.

Beijing hotly denies accusations of official involvement in massive cyberattacks against foreign targets, insinuating such activity is the work of rogues. But at least one piece of evidence cited by experts points to professional cyberspies: China's hackers don't work weekends.

Accusations of state-sanctioned hacking took center stage this past week following a detailed report by a U.S.-based Internet security firm Mandiant. It added to growing suspicions that the Chinese military is not only stealing national defense secrets and harassing dissidents but also pilfering information from foreign companies that could be worth millions or even billions of dollars.

Experts say Chinese hacking attacks are characterized not only by their brazenness, but by their persistence.

"China conducts at least an order of magnitude more than the next country," said Martin Libicki, a specialist on cyber warfare at the Rand Corporation, based in Santa Monica, California. The fact that hackers take weekends off suggests they are paid, and that would belie "the notion that the hackers are private," he said.

Libicki and other cyber warfare experts have long noted a Monday-through-Friday pattern in the intensity of attacks believed to come from Chinese sources, though there has been little evidence released publicly directly linking the Chinese military to the attacks.

Mandiant went a step further in its report Tuesday saying that it had traced hacking activities against 141 foreign entities in the U.S. Canada, Britain and elsewhere to a group of operators known as the "Comment Crew" or "APT1," for "Advanced Persistent Threat 1," which it traced back to the People's Liberation Army Unit 61398. The unit is headquartered in a nondescript 12-story building inside a military compound in a crowded suburb of China's financial hub of Shanghai.

Attackers stole information about pricing, contract negotiations, manufacturing, product testing and corporate acquisitions, the company said.

Hacker teams regularly began work, for the most part, at 8 a.m. Beijing time. Usually they continued for a standard work day, but sometimes the hacking persisted until midnight. Occasionally, the attacks stopped for two-week periods, Mandiant said, though the reason was not clear.

China denies any official involvement, calling such accusations "groundless" and insisting that Beijing is itself a major victim of hacking attacks, the largest number of which originate in the U.S. While not denying hacking attacks originated in China, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Thursday that it was flat out wrong to accuse the Chinese government or military of being behind them.

Mandiant and other experts believe Unit 61398 to be a branch of the PLA General Staff's Third Department responsible for collection and analysis of electronic signals such as e-mails and phone calls. It and the Fourth Department, responsible for electronic warfare, are believed to be the PLA units mainly responsible for infiltrating and manipulating computer networks.

China acknowledges pursuing these strategies as a key to delivering an initial blow to an opponent's communications and other infrastructure during wartime ? but the techniques are often the same as those used to steal information for commercial use.

Office hours
China has consistently denied state-sponsored hacking, but experts say the office hours that the cyberspies keep point to a professional army rather than mere hobbyists or so-called "hacktivists" inspired by patriotic passions.

Mandiant noticed that pattern while monitoring attacks on the New York Times last year blamed on another Chinese hacking group it labeled APT12. Hacker activity began at around 8:00 a.m. Beijing time and usually lasted through a standard workday.

The Rand Corporation's Libicki said he wasn't aware of any comprehensive studies, but that in such cases, most activity between malware embedded in a compromised system and the malware's controllers takes place during business hours in Beijing's time zone.

Richard Forno, director of the University of Maryland Baltimore County's graduate cybersecurity program, and David Clemente, a cybersecurity expert with independent analysis center Chatham House in London, said that observation has been widely noted among cybersecurity specialists.

"It would reflect the idea that this is becoming a more routine activity and that they are quite methodical," Clemente said.

The PLA's Third Department is brimming with resources, according to studies commissioned by the U.S. government, with 12 operation bureaus, three research institutes, and an estimated 13,000 linguists, technicians and researchers on staff. It's further reinforced by technical teams from China's seven military regions spread across the country, and by the military's vast academic resources, especially the PLA University of Information Engineering and the Academy of Military Sciences.

The PLA is believed to have made cyber warfare a key priority in its war-fighting capabilities more than a decade ago. Among the few public announcements of its development came in a May 25, 2011 news conference by Defense Ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng, in which he spoke of developing China's "online" army.

"Currently, China's network protection is comparatively weak," Geng told reporters, adding that enhancing information technology and "strengthening network security protection are important components of military training for an army."

Unit 61398 is considered just one of many such units under the Third Department responsible for hacking, according to experts.

Greg Walton, a cyber-security researcher who has tracked Chinese hacking campaigns, said he's observed the "Comment Crew" at work, but cites as equally active another Third Department unit operating out of the southwestern city of Chengdu. It is tasked with stealing secrets from Indian government security agencies and think tanks, together with the India-based Tibetan Government in Exile, Walton said.

Another hacking outfit believed by some to have PLA links, the "Elderwood Group," has targeted defense contractors, human rights groups, non-governmental organizations, and service providers, according to computer security company Symantec.

It's believed to have compromised Amnesty International's Hong Kong website in May 2012, although other attacks have gone after targets as diverse as the Council on Foreign Relations and Capstone Turbine Corporation, which makes gas microturbines for power plants.

Civilian departments believed to be involved in hacking include those under the Ministry of Public Security, which commands the police, and the Ministry of State Security, one of the leading clandestine intelligence agencies. The MSS is especially suspected in attacks on foreign academics studying Chinese social issues and unrest in the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.

Below them on the hacking hierarchy are private actors, including civilian universities and research institutes, state industries in key sectors such as information technology and resources, and college students and other individuals acting alone or in groups, according to analysts, University of Maryland's Forno said.

China's government isn't alone in being accused of cyber espionage, but observers say it has outpaced its rivals in using military assets to steal commercial secrets.

"Stealing secrets is stealing secrets regardless of the medium," Forno said. "The key difference is that you can't easily arrest such electronic thieves since they're most likely not even in the country, which differs from how the game was played during the Cold War."

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/china-hackers-seen-increasingly-professional-dont-work-weekends-1C8543779

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mafgeogi · Feb. 22, 2013

Feb. 22, 2013 ? The islands Reunion and Mauritius, both well-known tourist destinations, are hiding a micro-continent, which has now been discovered. The continent fragment known as Mauritia detached about 60 million years ago while Madagascar and India drifted apart, and had been hidden under huge masses of lava.

Such micro-continents in the oceans seem to occur more frequently than previously thought, says a study in the latest issue of Nature Geoscience.

The break-up of continents is often associated with mantle plumes: These giant bubbles of hot rock rise from the deep mantle and soften the tectonic plates from below, until the plates break apart at the hotspots. This is how Eastern Gondwana broke apart about 170 million years ago. At first, one part was separated, which in turn fragmented into Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica, which then migrated to their present position.

Plumes currently situated underneath the islands Marion and Reunion appear to have played a role in the emergence of the Indian Ocean. If the zone of the rupture lies at the edge of a land mass (in this case Madagascar / India), fragments of this land mass may be separated off. The Seychelles are a well-known example of such a continental fragment.

A group of geoscientists from Norway, South Africa, Britain and Germany have now published a study that suggests, based on the study of lava sand grains from the beach of Mauritius, the existence of further fragments. The sand grains contain semi-precious zircons aged between 660 and 1970 million years, which is explained by the fact that the zircons were carried by the lava as it pushed through subjacent continental crust of this age.

This dating method was supplemented by a recalculation of plate tectonics, which explains exactly how and where the fragments ended up in the Indian Ocean. Dr. Bernhard Steinberger of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and Dr. Pavel Doubrovine of Oslo University calculated the hotspot trail: "On the one hand, it shows the position of the plates relative to the two hotspots at the time of the rupture, which points towards a causal relation," says Steinberger. "On the other hand, we were able to show that the continent fragments continued to wander almost exactly over the Reunion plume, which explains how they were covered by volcanic rock." So what was previously interpreted only as the trail of the Reunion hotspot, are continental fragments which were previously not recognized as such because they were covered by the volcanic rocks of the Reunion plume. It therefore appears that such micro-continents in the ocean occur more frequently than previously thought.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

Journal Reference:

Trond H. Torsvik, Hans Amundsen, Ebbe H. Hartz, Fernando Corfu, Nick Kusznir, Carmen Gaina, Pavel V. Doubrovine, Bernhard Steinberger, Lewis D. Ashwal, Bj?rn Jamtveit. A Precambrian microcontinent in the Indian Ocean. Nature Geoscience, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/NGEO1736

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Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_environment/~3/OaIWm9jLxY4/130224142725.htm

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MBL scientists find genes linked to human neurological disorders in sea lamprey genome

Public release date: 24-Feb-2013
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Contact: Diana Kenney
dkenney@mbl.edu
508-289-7139
Marine Biological Laboratory

Discovery will accelerate research on Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury

MBL, WOODS HOLE, Mass. Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) have identified several genes linked to human neurological disorders, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injury, in the sea lamprey, a vertebrate fish whose whole-genome sequence is reported this week in the journal Nature Genetics.

"This means that we can use the sea lamprey as a powerful model to drive forward our molecular understanding of human neurodegenerative disease and neurological disorders," says Jennifer Morgan of the MBL's Eugene Bell Center for Regenerative Biology and Tissue Engineering. The ultimate goals are to determine what goes wrong with neurons after injury and during disease, and to determine how to correct these deficits in order to restore normal nervous system functions.

Unlike humans, the lamprey has an extraordinary capacity to regenerate its nervous system. If a lamprey's spinal cord is severed, it can regenerate the damaged nerve cells and be swimming again in 10-12 weeks.

Morgan and her collaborators at MBL, Ona Bloom and Joseph Buxbaum, have been studying the lamprey's recovery from spinal cord injury since 2009. The lamprey has large, identified neurons in its brain and spinal cord, making it an excellent model to study regeneration at the single cell-level. Now, the lamprey's genomic information gives them a whole new "toolkit" for understanding its regenerative mechanisms, and for comparing aspects of its physiology, such as inflammation response, to that of humans.

The lamprey genome project was accomplished by a consortium of 59 researchers led by Weiming Li of Michigan State University and Jeramiah Smith of the University of Kentucky. The MBL scientists' contribution focused on neural aspects of the genome, including one of the project's most intriguing findings.

Lampreys, in contrast to humans, don't have myelin, an insulating sheath around neurons that allows faster conduction of nerve impulses. Yet the consortium found genes expressed in the lamprey that are normally expressed in myelin. In humans, myelin-associated molecules inhibit nerves from regenerating if damaged. "A lot of the focus of the spinal cord injury field is on neutralizing those inhibitory molecules," Morgan says.

"So there is an interesting conundrum," Morgan says. "What are these myelin-associated genes doing in an animal that doesn't have myelin, and yet is good at regeneration? It opens up a new and interesting set of questions, " she says. Addressing them could bring insight to why humans lost the capacity for neural regeneration long ago, and how this might be restored.

At present, Morgan and her collaborators are focused on analyzing which genes are expressed and when, after spinal cord injury and regeneration. The whole-genome sequence gives them an invaluable reference for their work.

Morgan, Bloom, and Buxbaum collaborate at the MBL through funding by the Charles Evans Foundation. Bloom is based at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research/Hofstra North Shore-Long Island Jewish in New York. Buxbaum is from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

###

Citation:

Smith JJ et al (2013) Sequencing of the sea lamprey (Petromyzon marinus) genome provides insight into vertebrate evolution. Nature Genetics: DOI: 10.1038/ng.2568

The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is dedicated to scientific discovery and improving the human condition through research and education in biology, biomedicine, and environmental science. Founded in 1888 in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the MBL is an independent, nonprofit corporation. A corps of more than 270 scientists and support personnel pursue research year-round at the MBL, joined each year by more than 400 visiting scientists, summer staff, and research associates from hundreds of institutions around the world. Among the scientists with a significant affiliation with the MBL are 55 Nobel Laureates (since 1929).

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