[카테고리:] Uncategorized

by Andy May

I wrote my latest book, Politics and Climate Change: A History, because I recognized that government funding of scientific research was corrupting science. We were warned this might happen by President Eisenhower in his farewell address to the public, where he said:

“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocation, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.” (Eisenhower, 1961)

How right he was.

Federal money allows unelected and protected civil service bureaucrats to control scientific research. They dictate the projects, and often outcomes. They use selective leaks to the press to embarrass any elected politicians who try to interfere with their control over research. The bureaucrats trade in fear and relish it. Politicians who disagree with them are suppressing or ignoring “science.” To them science is not a search for the truth, it is a dogma that must be believed. Worse, they believe a consensus of experts is scientific fact. Science is a method of disproving consensus opinion with observational facts, analysis, and reason. It is a methodology, honed over centuries, that allows one person to show everyone else they are wrong. Science is the opposite of political consensus.

Government money clearly does not improve research, the theoretical estimates of the impact of man-made CO₂ have not narrowed in 41 years, as we discussed in our last two posts, here and here. Despite billions in government spending, the IPCC AR5 report (IPCC, 2013) still says the impact of doubling CO₂ is between 1.5°C and 4.5°C, exactly the same range given in the Charney Report (Charney, et al., 1979). Empirical observation-based estimates, like the one by Nic Lewis and Judith Curry (Lewis & Curry, 2018), have narrowed, but these were not government funded. The funding did not improve science, it was not intended to improve the science, it was political.

The bureaucrats use an ignorant and compliant news media to demonize any privately funded scientific research as “corrupted” by “evil” corporations. The bureaucrats enlist the support of non-profit activists, supported by giant foundations, owned, and controlled by billionaires. These billionaires seek influence and political power. The non-profits, in turn, lobby the press to get their version of the story out. Every company doing independent research is compared to an evil tobacco company and accused of lying to the public. The book contains many examples of this.

This demonization is an attempt to deny corporations, farmers, and workers a voice in debates over government regulations and environmental issues. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a left-wing advocacy non-profit organization that pretends to be scientific. It is well known for slanting its “research” to get desired results (Activist Facts, 2020). Their report, Heads They Win, Tails We Lose (Grifo, Halpern, & Hansel, 2012), is a blatant attempt to suppress any scientific debate of government regulations by private corporations. The science is not debated or explained, one can imagine journalists and non-profits funded by billionaires saying, “The public doesn’t need to understand this, we tell them what to think!”

In the words of the Australian wordsmith, Joanne Nova:

“A trial without a defense is a sham

Business without competition is a monopoly

Science without debate is propaganda“

Remember this the next time someone says the “science is settled.”

Grifo, et al. complain that there is “inappropriate influence of companies with a financial stake in the outcome.” If the companies have a financial stake in the outcome, they should be involved in the regulatory debate, how can it be otherwise in a republic? These companies have a first amendment right to be involved. Grifo, et al. are demanding what President Eisenhower feared, “public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite” (Eisenhower, 1961).

President Eisenhower had two fears, he was worried that scientists would take over public policy and that government officials would control scientific research and outcomes. We now have a devilish combination of the two.

Why have privately funded research?
The UCS fears that companies will be dishonest. They do not believe companies should use litigation to threaten their opponents into being silent, change their views, or destroy their reputations. They also fear that corporations will not be transparent (Grifo, Halpern, & Hansel, 2012, p. 45). Yet as explained in Chapter 3 of our book, the UCS did all these things when they attacked ExxonMobil in the “ExxonKnew” campaign. We expect people to be aggressive in a debate, but we need the debate, and we need both sides to be in it. If one side is excluded or suppressed in any fashion, our republic is gone, and a dictatorship or oligarchy is formed.

In the 19^th and pre-WWII 20^th century universities and private sector corporations and individuals worked closely together on research and academic programs. This was a good combination; universities tailored their degree programs and their research toward what industry needed. This supplied the corporations with well-trained employees and helped develop new products that improved the world.

The post-war explosion of federal funding of research is beginning to slow and simultaneously business funding has been increasing since about 2005. This is a good trend, but unfortunately, federal spending on research is still almost double corporate spending (Mervis, 2017). As a result, university research is still more oriented toward government projects than business ventures and the government projects tend toward fearmongering projects like climate change, rather than projects that create new products and better society. We believe government funding of research should be no more than corporate funding, and ideally zero because the government tends to fund projects that are political, destructive, and divisive.

Japan (Kazuyuki & Shingo, 2011) and China have many business-oriented university projects with American companies. However, the projects in China are often with American companies like Microsoft or Google and are designed to steal U.S. technology (Song, 2008). Estimates vary, but Chinese intellectual property theft amounts to $225 billion to $600 billion per year according to many sources (Huang & Smith, 2019). According to the National Law Review:

“China’s typical modus operandi is to steal American IP, replicate it, replace the U.S. company originating that IP in the Chinese domestic market, then displace the United States in the global market.” (Laufman, Casino, & Kasdan, 2020)

In the United States, liberal non-profit organizations, the news media, and some in government have driven a wedge between the natural collaboration of universities and business by demonizing the businesses and any funding they provide to universities. This has hurt the businesses, the universities, and research in general. It only helps our global competitors. University climate change research is oriented toward creating elaborate scenarios that predict the end of the earth. The scenarios are used to try and eliminate millions of jobs in the fossil fuel industry. They want to create fear in the public and make them more manageable. This increases government power since the public will often give up their rights and their jobs to gain security.

In the 1970s, the news media predicted we would all die due to global cooling as explained in Chapter 6 of our book. Some scientists even blamed human emissions of CO₂ for the cooling. The media love a good disaster prediction and if humans are to blame, the story is even better. Then warming began and again CO₂ was the reason. Now we are all going to die from CO₂-caused global warming. The shameless media didn’t apologize or even blink, they published that as well. When global cooling begins again, as it inevitably will, count on the media to find a compliant scientist to blame CO₂.

It isn’t just the government funding. Media attention motivates universities to come up with scary end-of-the-world stories, rather than products that improve and save lives. Media attention means more government money. As government money begins to drive university research, the universities become more isolated from the businesses they are supposed to be training employees for. Students want high-profile government jobs so they can save the world and ignore the more beneficial and productive jobs in industry. Those jobs go overseas.

University tuition and costs have gone up, but even accounting for increasing college costs, on average attending college is still worth it (Abel & Deitz, 2014). This may not be the case in the future, technology may erode the premium that college graduates can demand in the marketplace (Staton, 2014).

This is all happening as the United States has allowed our technology to be stolen by China and other countries. Onerous regulations, justified by sketchy and secret EPA funded research have forced high-paying, high value-add, manufacturing overseas. Other excessive regulations, often designed and justified with secret government scientific research, have made some extraction businesses (mining, oil, and gas) in the United States excessively expensive or economically impossible.

We are not only sending technology, manufacturing, and extraction overseas, we are simultaneously killing it in the United States and in Europe. As high value-add jobs and high salaries leave, the value of a university education becomes less. Service industry jobs, such as mowing lawns, waitressing, or becoming a store clerk, pay less and these are the jobs laid off technology, manufacturing, and extraction labor are forced into. These jobs do not require university degrees, but many with college degrees are forced into them when the sectors they work in disappear. The universities helped engineer the decline in western technology, manufacturing, and extraction and now they are engineering their own decline.

Businesses are far less likely to trust university educations as they become less involved in degree programs. Students are graduating with more debt as costs go up and make less income to pay it back. Many degrees have become valueless. It has been estimated that student debt exceeds 1.5 trillion dollars in the U.S. (Hanson, 2020). This debt slows home buying, marriage and child-rearing, the most important stimulants to our economy.

Victor Davis Hanson speculated in National Review that universities are sowing the seeds of their own obsolescence (Hanson, 2020). He is correct. To make universities more relevant to our nation, youth, and economy, we must drastically reduce or eliminate government funded university research.

Defense research, of necessity, must remain under government control and must be done in secret. But, except for defense, the government should withdraw from research funding. Universities need to reform and enlarge their relationships with private industry. Cutting off government funding of research would force this to occur. They must orient their research toward productive areas that create new products, improve our wellbeing, and expand the economy. Their faculties will be forced to move in the same direction and produce better workers for industry. The doom-and-gloom orientation of much of our university Earth science research today is poisonous and destructive.

The media have made scientists into gods that spout “truth” and “prove” things. Neither is possible, as we have seen, scientists only propose temporary ideas and then attempt to disprove them. Truths, or more accurately facts, only exist until disproven. Politicians choose scientists that “prove” things convenient to politicians. Witness the corruption of the scientists in the IPCC, as described in Chapter 7 and elsewhere in the book.

Socrates was a scientist who was killed by politicians in 399BC. Socrates believed that people should question everything. His discussions were full of questions, the questions led to more questions, it was his way of learning and teaching. He never proved anything, but he learned. Finally, by questioning the local gods and religion, he was killed. He defied the consensus with his skepticism and died for it (World History edu, 2020). Scientific debate is essential, and the less popular debater should not be jailed or killed.

The public and the news media, who should be asking probing questions, have become convinced that they cannot understand science. They are reduced to asking scientists to spoon feed them sound bites. With a little work, most lay people can understand scientific papers and they should try. Relying on politicians, scientists, and the media to tell us what is happening is not acceptable. Scientists should write more that can be understood by lay people, as John Tyndall and Svante Arrhenius did. Scientists should graduate from writing plots for disaster movies to working to improve our lives. The news media are awful at writing about science because they often have no interest in what is true, they just want attention.

This opinion is condensed from Chapter 8 of Politics and Climate Change: A History

The bibliography can be downloaded here.

Source: The Government Corruption of Science | Watts Up With That?

‘So much evidence I feel like it’s coming in through a fire hose’

By Joe Kovacs

“I’ve got lots of ways to prove it … but I’m not gonna tell on national TV what all we have. I just can’t do that.” WATCH:

Bartiromo wondered: “You have a very small timeframe here, the elections are supposed to be certified in early December. Do you believe that you can present this to the courts and be successful within just this couple of weeks?”

“First of all, I never say anything I can’t prove. Secondly, the evidence is coming in so fast I can’t even process it all,” Powell responded.

“This is a massive election fraud, and I’m very concerned it involved not only Dominion and its Smartmatic software, but that the software essentially was used by other elections machines also. It’s the software that was the problem. Even their own manual explains how votes can be wiped away. It’s like drag and drop Trump votes to a separate folder and then delete that folder.”

“It’s absolutely brazen how people bought the system, and why they bought the system. In fact, every state that bought Dominion for sure should have a criminal investigation or at least a serious investigation of the officers in the states who bought the software. We’ve even got some evidence of kickbacks essentially.”

Powell named names, including Peter Neffenger, the former administrator of the Transportation Security Administration under Barack Obama.

Powell said Neffenger is “president and on the board of directors of Smartmatic. And it just so happens he’s on Mr. Biden’s presidential transition team, that’s going to be non-existent, because we’re fixing to overturn the results of the election in multiple states.”

“He was fully briefed on it. He saw it happen in other countries it was exported internationally for profit by people that are behind Smartmatic and Dominion.”

Powell also said the CIA must have known about the problem with the voting machines, and she called for the immediate firing of CIA Director Gina Haspel.

“It’s really an insidious, corrupt system and I can’t tell you how livid I am with our government for not paying attention to complaints, even brought by Democrats,” Powell said. “Nobody in our government has paid any attention to it which makes me wonder if the CIA has used it for its own benefit in different places. And why Gina Haspel is still there in the CIA is beyond my comprehension. She should be fired immediately.”

Meanwhile, President Trump remained steadfast on Sunday in his refusal to concede the election in any way to Biden.

“He only won in the eyes of the FAKE NEWS MEDIA,” Trump tweeted. “I concede NOTHING! We have a long way to go. This was a RIGGED ELECTION!”

Source: Sidney Powell drops bomb: ‘I’ve got lots of ways to prove massive election fraud’

1) Salvador Luria—Born in Turin, Italy—how did he make his way to the U.S., and where did he first begin his studies?

Dr. Salvador Luria was a Nobel Laureate and molecular biologist extraordinaire. He would become famous for his pioneering discoveries on bacteriophage genome structure and their mode of viral replication. Salvador Edward Luria was born on the 13^th of August, in 1912, in the Northern Italian town of Turin. His parents were Davide, an accountant, and Ester Luria. He had an older brother.

His teachers heavily influenced Luria as a young boy growing up in the escalation of fascism in Italy. Luria, like them, had opposed the political movement.

Luria excelled in mathematics and language in his pre-college courses. His admitted lack of self-motivation caused his grades in chemistry and biology to be subpar. He claimed to have chosen to study pre-medicine and pursue medicine as a career goal due to his parents’ insistence, not personal preferences.

2) Where did Luria get his medical training?

Luria attended the University of Turin medical school and, while a medical student, studied under the supervision of Professor Giuseppe Levi. The latter was a noted mentor of future prominent scientists, such as Rita Levi Montalcini and Renato Dulbecco. Luria graduated in 1935 and earned his M.D. summa cum laude. No master or Ph.D. degrees were formally given, as the program was highly selective in the Italian higher educational system, and only the highest achieving students were granted those degrees.

For the next year, Luria was enlisted in the Italian army, as military service was compulsory. He served as a medical officer and completed courses in radiation biology at the University of Rome. This placement provided Luria with an introduction to Max Delbrück’s genetic theories. He also met Enrico Fermi, the famous physicist. About Max Delbrück’s ideas regarding the gene as a molecule, Luria wrote later; they seemed to “open the way to the Holy Grail of biophysics.”

In 1938, Luria was hopeful to work with Delbrück in the United States after receiving a fellowship. Still, human beings of Jewish descent were barred from Benito Mussolini’s fascist administration’s academic research fellowships. Luria then fled to Paris, France, and remained there until 1940 when the Nazi German armies invaded. While in France, he attended the Institute of Radium.

Incredibly, it has been reported that Luria rode a bicycle, almost 500 miles (about 804 kilometers), to Marseille and obtained an immigration visa to the United States in June 1940.

Once safe in New York City, Luria changed his name from Salvatore to Salvador. A Rockefeller Foundation fellowship at Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons was granted to Luria in 1940 with Fermi’s assistance. Luria took Zella Hurwitz, Ph.D., to be his bride in 1945. She was a Professor of Psychology at Tufts University in Massachusetts. The couple has a son named Daniel. Luria was, alas, a Research Assistant in Surgical Bacteriology. At Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, see Figure 43, Luria collaborated with Max Delbrück and Alfred Hershey.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Novick_Stocker_Papazian_EMLederberg_Luria_Lindegren.jpg

Figure 43. A photo of Aaron Novick, Bruce A. D. Stocker, Haig Papazian, Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg, Salvador Luria and Geraldine Lindegren at the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium of 1953.

Luria’s next move was to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In his early years there, he and Giuseppe Bertani discovered the phenomenon of host-controlled restriction and modification of a bacterial virus.

Luria started as an Instructor and continued up the ranks to become an Associate Professor at Indiana University from 1943 to 1950. Luria’s first graduate student was none other than James D. Watson, who, along with Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA. Interestingly, in 1953, Luria was denied a passport and barred from presenting a paper at a scientific conference in Oxford, England, because of his political activism. Thus, the responsibility would go to a young Jim Watson to present the latest work from the American “Phage Group” to the audience in attendance. The scientific investigators who were members of the pioneering “Phage Group” were convinced that the true nature of the gene could be elucidated by the study of viruses that infected bacteria. Watson thus presented Alfred Hershey’s famous Chase-Hershey experiment conveying the fact that DNA was the hereditary material.

3) Luria shared the Nobel Prize with Max Delbrück and Alfred Hershey—what were their singular discoveries?

Max Delbrück, Alfred Hershey, and Salvador Luria would share the medicine or physiology Nobel Prize in 1969 for their discoveries regarding the viral genetic structure and their replicative nature. See Figure 44. Typically, viral genomes are enclosed in a protein shell called a capsid. Occasionally, viruses harbor a biological membrane called an envelope. Together, Delbrück, Hershey, and Luria had discovered that the gene structure of viruses was of a chemical nature, namely, nucleic acids, such as RNA or DNA. They also learned how to determine the numbers of phages that burst open a single bacterial cell. They further found that the genomes of phages exchanged genetic information with one another. In particular, Delbrück and Luria would provide shattering data supporting the idea that evolution was driven by natural selection of randomly produced spontaneous genetic mutations.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Virus_structure_simple.png

Figure 44. Simplified diagram of the structure of viruses.

Other notable Phage Group participants include Jim Watson, Francis Crick, Seymour Benzer, Sydney Brenner, and Matthew Meselson. Like these Phage Group colleagues, Delbrück, Hershey, and Luria are considered early forerunners of molecular biology.

Luria worked in Max Delbrück’s lab at Vanderbilt University. Delbrück is covered elsewhere in this book. Delbrück was a key participant with Emory Leon Ellis in performing the famous “one-step” growth curve experiment using bacteriophage viruses. In 1939, Ellis and Delbrück determined the number of phages released from the cell of a single bacterium after bursting it open—the so-called “burst size.” Delbrück also worked with Salvador Luria in the early 1940s to determine the mechanism for bacterial resistance to phage infection. They discovered that mutation played a role in phage resistance. Delbrück’s work helped to definitively demonstrate that mutations occurred spontaneously in a random fashion rather than by induction. Working with W. T. Bailey, Jr., Delbrück was involved in the experiments designed to show that phage genome recombination occurred in bacteria. These works would play a large role in the garnering of the Nobel for him. Later, Delbrück moved on to study fungi and their response to light sources.

The life and science of Alfred Hershey is the focus of a chapter in our 2018 book titled “The Inventions and Discoveries of the World’s Most Famous Scientists.” Hershey is most famous for his work with Martha Chase. They discovered that the genetic material that entered the bacterium host was DNA, rather than protein like most other investigators had fully expected. Thus, the Chase-Hershey data suggested that the gene’s molecular disposition was biochemical and constituted nucleic acid. This discovery alone was instrumental in enhancing the focus towards the elucidation of the DNA structure by Watson and Crick and, to no small extent, those of Maurice Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin, and Raymond Gosling.

As mentioned above, Salvador Luria and Max Delbrück discovered that bacteria acquired resistance to phage infection through spontaneous genetic mutation and not necessarily by adaptation in the Lamarckian sense. Their famous fluctuation test was legendary. It is still widely presented in textbooks dealing with genetics, virology, and molecular biology. Students in various laboratory courses are taught these concepts by repeating the famous experiment themselves. Luria would also become famous for demonstrating that mutation occurs in bacteriophages’ genomes, as had previously been observed with bacterial host mutation. Luria also performed classic experiments dealing with lysogeny and transduction.

In the lytic cycle, the bacterium is killed by exploding it, a process called lysis. Lysogeny is a process in which the host cell remains intact once a virus enters a prophage stage. During the prophage phase, the viral genome integrates into the bacterial genome. The host bacterium, now considered a lysogen in this state, can grow like a common bacterium via binary fission. Transduction involves the transfer of genetic material to bacteria by using a phage as the delivery vector. Luria’s studies in these latter areas were critical to the advancement of molecular biology. Investigators would use Luria’s discoveries to learn about, for example, regulation of gene expression, DNA cloning, and transfer of genetic programming to different species and future generations.

4) One of Luria’s most well-known discoveries was that bacteria mutated spontaneously into “phage resistant” forms. Why is this important?

Luria became famous worldwide amongst bacterial geneticists and later among molecular biologists for his brilliant discovery on the mechanism of bacterial resistance to phage infection. The celebrated experiment conducted by Salvador Luria and Max Delbrück was a mastermind in its design. The story of its conception was legendary, and the experimental scheme was pure genius. What is more, the experiment was founded on the workings of a gambling slot machine!

Working with Delbrück, Luria tested the controversial subject of phage resistant bacteria and its molecular, cellular mechanism. Two conflicting ideas had emerged to explain how a bacterium could develop recalcitrance to lysis by a lytic phage. One idea, called “mutation,” which had been invoked to explain phage resistance, was that the immunity resulted from selecting randomly existing spontaneous mutants in a bacterial population. The second idea, called “acquired hereditary immunity” for phage resistance in the bacteria, held that the phage triggered immunity by a process reminiscent of a Lamarckian mode of evolution.

The formulation for the virtuoso experiment started shortly after Luria’s arrival to Bloomington, Indiana, to begin a new post as a young professor. Luria attended a faculty dance, and he encountered an unnamed colleague playing a slot machine. Luria had chided the gambling colleague, who was focused on the jackpot. Suddenly, Luria realized that mutating bacteria could be envisaged as a sort of a bank bonanza. He reasoned that such jackpots in a slot machine obeyed a Poisson distribution, describing a series of random events considering rare bonanza outcomes.

Luria hypothesized that bacterial phage resistance manifested itself by selecting rare and random spontaneously occurring mutants—the bonanza. These random mutants could appear in a series of “jackpots” in culture—the Poisson distribution. In other words, the selection of random spontaneous mutations was analogous to the occurrence of rare jackpots, conferring a desirable genetic program capable of possessing a useful phenotype.

On the other hand, if phage induction were responsible for bacterial resistance to phage infection, then the jackpot mutants would be evenly distributed in a bacterial culture. In either of the two cases, the average mutant numbers would be similar. However, the distribution would differ depending on whether random spontaneous mutation or phage induction of resistance was at play. One merely had to test the idea in the laboratory! One grand experiment could discern between the two conflicting hypotheses: the spontaneous bacterial mutant selection hypothesis (mutation) versus the bacterial mutation by the phage induction hypothesis (“acquired hereditary immunity”).

The experiment would become known as the fluctuation experiment. Luria and Delbrück used the bacteriophage called alpha (α) and its dedicated bacterial host, Escherichia coli strain B, as their laboratory test subjects. They cultured the Escherichia coli cells that were sensitive to phage α. Then they used the Escherichia coli from the culture to inoculate a large flask with broth medium and a series of test tubes with a few milliliters of broth medium, numbering well over 180 cultures! Next, Luria and Delbrück took multiple samples from the large flask and a small representative sample from each of the hundreds of test tubes. They tested all of them for susceptibility to phage α or resistance to the virus.

The startling result was an even distribution of phage α-resistant Escherichia coli mutants from the large flask. On the other hand, there was a distinctly measurable fluctuation in the number of α-phage-resistant Escherichia coli mutants from the hundreds of individual cultures. That is, the number of phage resistant mutants varied widely—it fluctuated. Thus, Luria and Delbrück concluded that the “mutation” hypothesis was correct. That is, the bacteria developed resistance to phage infection by the selection of random and spontaneously occurring mutations.

Their famous experiment validated statistically that inheritance in bacteria follows Darwinian philosophies. Besides, mutant bacteria randomly occurring can continue to bestow viral resistance without the presence of the virus. Luria and Delbrück published their innovative discovery in a 21-page elegantly written tome in the 28^th volume of the journal Genetics in November of 1943. The molecular biology world would never be the same. The last vestiges of Lamarckism had been delivered a final blow.

5) True or False: One of Luria’s first graduate students was James Watson—what other famous names did he mentor or supervise?

Indeed, the inimitable James D. Watson was Salvador’s first graduate student at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. Watson had considered himself fortunate that Luria was still a young professor. Watson had all of Luria’s attention and funding. Watson also picked up a kind of brashness that he acquired from Luria’s example. When Luria occasionally heard of an unsound scientific idea, he was quite terse in his immediate dismissal of it. Soon, Watson followed Luria’s lead and would harbor the same irascibly critical manner for the rest of his life.

In graduate school, Watson took Luria’s course in virology despite hearing rumors that he treated his students like dogs. Watson later reported that Luria’s lectures were mesmerizing, hinting that the future wave was to be held in genetics. It was the first time that Watson had ever heard of a virus. Luria had also lectured on his exciting work with Delbrück. They measured a single phage’s ability to infect a single bacterial cell and use it to produce hundreds of identical progeny phages.

Under Luria, Watson’s Ph.D. thesis involved determining the effects of X-rays on phages’ ability to undergo recombination and produce viable phage progeny within the bacteria. Luria suggested that Watson evaluate the extent to which X-rays genetically damaged the phage’s multiplicity of reactivation system. It was a phenomenon based on a discovery by Luria and Delbrück that phages that were inactivated by X-rays could nevertheless produce active phage progeny. Two phages are genetically recombined when inside a bacterium. The internal recombination would presumably create an active bacteria-lysing phage. Watson started the studies based on Luria’s initial ideas. Soon Watson became more independent and finished the project to everyone’s satisfaction. At 22 years of age, Watson successfully acquired his Ph.D. from the University of Indiana under Luria’s close guidance in 1950.

Dr. Renato Dulbecco was a postdoctoral fellow in Luria’s lab, starting in 1947. Interestingly, Luria’s United States citizenship transpired in 1947. Meanwhile, under Luria’s guidance, Dulbecco learned valuable virological-based laboratory techniques, which would help him in later years to study cancer and win a Nobel Prize in 1975.

In 1949, Dr. Giuseppe Bertani would study lysogeny of Escherichia coli and Shigella bacteria by phages called P1, P2, and P3, in Luria’s laboratory. Luria and Bertani developed a culture medium, which they called “lysogeny broth,” which later was called “Luria broth,” and later Luria-Bertani (LB) medium. See Figure 45.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Laboratoorne_s%C3%B6%C3%B6de_%22LB%22_ehk_%22lysogeny_broth%22_on_sobiv_bakterite_kasvatamiseks..JPG

Figure 45. One of the most common laboratory media – LB, lysogenic broth, known later as Luria-Bertani broth.

Today, the famous LB medium is widely used to cultivate many bacterial species in molecular biological laboratories around the world. Genetic cloning in molecular biology labs frequently involves transformation into Escherichia coli host cells and growth on LB agar Petri plates. See Figure 46.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:E._coli_plate.JPG

Figure 46. This is a photo of a Luria Bertani agar plate streaked with Escherichia coli, forming colonies.

6) Some of Luria’s later work was at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Here he investigated cell membranes—what did he find?

By 1959, Luria became the Microbiology department chair at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His new emphasis in research was on cell membranes and bacteriocins.

A sabbatical to Paris allowed him to study at the Pasteur Institute in 1963. His discovery of bacteriocins effects on the function of cell membranes encouraged him to continue his research at MIT. He found that holes in the cell membrane played a critical role in cell membrane function. Luria was named Sedgwick Professor of Biology at MIT in 1964. In 1965, Luria was named a non-resident Fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. In 1970, Luria was appointed Institute Professor at the Department of Biology at MIT. In 1972, Luria became chair of the Center for Cancer Research at MIT.

In Luria’s time, the bacteriocins were called colicins. Luria studied those he named “E1” and “K.” Dr. Kay Fields and Luria discovered that the bacteriocins prevented active transport of sugars into Escherichia coli, which then starved to death. The microbes could not undergo glycolysis. In another study, Dr. David Feingold and Luria discovered the bacteriocin E1 enhanced the uptake of hydrogen ions, which are positively charged ions known as cations. The increased proton permeability led to the collapse of the so-called proton motive force, which then prevented ATP production, leading to the killing of the target cell.

Today more than 20 bacteriocins reside in Escherichia coli, and they are found in many other bacterial species. The bacteriocins inhibit the growth of competitor bacteria in several ways. As Luria discovered, one method of bacterial growth inhibition from the bacteriocins involved their action on target membranes. Luria and colleagues found that these bacteriocins inhibit active transport of nutrients into target bacteria or enhance the entry of unwanted ions into the bacteria. Either of these outcomes, i.e., nutrient entry prevention or ion entry enhancement, is detrimental to the bacterium. It can die from either of these phenomena. The bacteriocin manufacture in bacterial producers is directed by plasmids known as bacteriocinogens. Typically, UV light radiation can stimulate the bacteriocinogens into action, causing the release from producers of the bacteriocins. The released bacteriocins then migrate to their unsuspecting target bacteria and kill them.

Target bacteria, however, can fight back against the bacteriocins. There are several bacteriocin resistance mechanisms. One scheme involves reducing bacteriocin binding or membrane insertion. Another tool sequesters the bacteriocins, making them unavailable for antibacterial action. A third system uses an efflux pump or a bacteriocin transporter to expel the bacteriocins from the bacterium. Lastly, the target bacterium can simply digest the bacteriocins into inactive forms.

7) In his later life— Luria enjoyed reading and studying the humanities—and several other realms. Can you tell us a few?

The assorted humanities indeed deeply enamored Luria. Luria had inspired graduate students to read on topics that were not necessarily related to the hard sciences. Interestingly, Luria even gave periodic lectures on world literature. After his retirement, Luria penned several reflective essays and prepared popular public addresses related to the humanities. He wrote a compelling autobiographical memoir, titled “A Slot Machine, a Broken Test Tube: An Autobiography” in 1984. He had written that a laboratory mishap, a broken test tube, later serendipitously led to the discovery of restriction enzymes, which led to the development of molecular cloning. The story goes that in 1952 at the University of Illinois, Luria and his graduate student, Mary Human, studied DNA lysis in Escherichia coli infected with a phage. When they broke a test tube laden with phage-infected Escherichia coli, they switched to the study of Shigella bacteria. The serendipitous switch in bacteria by Human and Luria led to a surprising new observation. The Escherichia coli-specific phages could not replicate when exposed to the Shigella bacteria! The phage infection inhibition in Escherichia coli did not occur if exposed to any other bacteria tested. So, they began a systematic examination of various phages and bacteria hosts to reproduce the Shigella inhibitory effects of phage replication in Escherichia coli. They noticed that the phage seemed to disappear from Escherichia coli when mixed with a different bacterial species and reappear in the next generation of the same Escherichia coli host cells.

Human and Luria referred to the process as a host-induced mechanism and later as a restriction-modification system. Follow-up studies of the disappearance-reappearance phenomena by E.S. Anderson, Giuseppe Bertani, and Jean Weigle suggested that the bacteria were somehow responsible for the restriction-modification process. In 1962, Daisy Dussoix, then a graduate student, and her advisor, Werner Arber, postulated that bacterial restriction endonucleases were responsible for the disappearing lambda phage DNA. The new work led to discovering additional restriction enzymes, which could be used for cloning genes!

In his later years, Dr. Luria took the opportunity to advocate for the merit of scientific progress in democratic societal locales. Luria had gone before Senate and Congressional committees and testified on issues important to scientific policymaking. Luria was a prolific writer of scientific papers (over 150 articles), plus essays and four books. He authored a popular award-winning science book called Life: The Unfinished Experiment in 1973, earning the National Book Award in 1974.

In 1955 Luria became an editor for Virology, a prestigious journal, and held the post until 1972. Luria would serve on the editorial boards for the Journal of Bacteriology, Experimental Cell Research, and the prestigious Journal of Molecular Biology. Luria wrote a textbook about viruses called General Virology, publishing the first of three editions in 1953. Virologists considered the book a gold standard.

8) Where did Luria die, and what would you say were his most outstanding contributions?

Luria died on February 6, 1991, at the age of 78 of a heart attack while in Lexington, Massachusetts. Dr. Luria’s most significant scientific contribution would have to be his determination of phage replication mode involving the lytic and lysogenic cycles. See Figure 47. During the lytic cycle, the phage infection results in the lysis of bacterium and the release of hundreds of progeny phages, diffusing to bind other cells and starting the process again.

Each of these steps represents good molecular and cellular targets for modulation. The viral replication stages and the cellular machinery absconded by the viruses are keenly sought after by medical virologists to inhibit them. Hence, viral infection can be thwarted by chemotherapeutics to prevent and treat illnesses produced by viruses, such as infectious diseases and cancer.

In the lysogenic cycle, the bacterium remains alive, and the phage enters a prophage state. As a prophage, the virus’s nucleic acid genome integrates into the genome of the host bacterium. It permits the host to grow via binary fission. The bacterium becomes a lysogen and can remain as such until the prophage is induced by, let us say UV light exposure. The lysogen will consequently enter the lytic stage to produce new progeny and cause the host’s bursting. Luria and Delbrück were the first investigators to determine how many phages were released upon bacterial bursting. The process became known as the determination of the burst size.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Figure_21_02_03.png

Figure 47. Lytic vs. Lysogenic cycles of phage infection in bacteria.

Another outstanding contribution was Luria’s visualization of phages using the electron microscope. See Figure 48. Luria had collaborated with Delbrück and Thomas Anderson to acquire some of the world’s first images of bacteriophages using the then-new electron microscope.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ToBRFV_Particles02.jpg

Figure 48. Electron micrograph illustration of viral particles.

Luria would be bestowed with many accolades during his lifetime. Professor Luria was also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1959, the National Academy of Sciences in 1960, plus the American Philosophical Society in 1964. He was awarded the Lenghi Prize and became a member of the National Academy of Science (Italy) in 1965. In 1969, Luria took the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, along with Max Delbrück and Alfred Hershey. They clarified the viral replication mechanism and the genetic structure of bacteriophage viruses. Luria earned the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, given by Columbia University, in 1969, and was awarded membership to the Institute of Medicine in 1971. As mentioned above, Luria was given the prestigious National Book Award for Life: The Unfinished Experiment in 1974. Luria earned the National Medal of Science in 1991.

For additional information and a list of Dr. Salvador Luria’s most influential scientific publications, visit:

• Publications: https://neurotree.org/beta/publications.php?pid=1950
• Stories by Salvador E. Luria: https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/salvador-e-luria/
• Biography to purchase: https://books.google.com/books/about/Salvador_E_Luria_Biography.html?id=DunjjwEACAAJ

The Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) system, located north of the nation’s capital in Washington, D.C., is one of the more liberal public education systems in the country. During the coronavirus pandemic, the county public school system hosted a LGBTQ town hall to commemorate historical events in the gay rights movement, and  announced that it will pilot an LGBTQ social studies course.

The system’s superintendent sent a  memo to the county’s board of education, which recommended that the one-year “anti-racist” audit be awarded to the consulting firm Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium. The goal of the audit is to create “equitable outcomes for every student’s academic and social-emotional well-being.” The superintendent lauded the upcoming audit as an “opportunity to examine not only the student experience; it presents the occasion to analyze policies and practices that impact staff.”

The audit will take a deep look into “Workforce Diversity, Work Conditions, K–12 Curriculum Review, Equity Achievement Framework Progress, Community Relations and Engagement, and Evaluation of School Cultures.” The deadline for the anti-racism audit bids for consultants was this past October 12. The memo  said that the purpose of the audit was to find a consultant “with deep knowledge and expertise in leading work in racial equity to organize and lead a systemwide anti-racist audit.”  The MCPS plans to spend “a total amount not to exceed $454,680.”

As the Washington Free Beacon reported, the recommended consultant has ties to the anti-conservative and anti-religious organization, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The SPLC has a list of alleged hate groups and commonly places conservative and Christian organizations on the list, without a fair assessment or input. The consultant also claimed that it helps promote “equity in education to achieve social justice.”

The contract recommendation came after a projected budget shortfall of $101 million in the coming year due to declining enrollment during the coronavirus pandemic. Bethesda Magazine, a local publication, noted that projected revenue losses will total around $101 million, or a 3.6% decrease in the system’s $2.8 billion budget.

Source: Liberal Maryland public schools will spend $450,000 for anti-racism audit

The question looms large:  with the current crisis of internal terrorists such as BLM, Antifa, Boogaloo and others—how will America hold itself together in the coming years?  How will it survive so many cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious and world-view divides?   Answer: it won’t!  We are being turned into a “Nation of Strangers” by the people we elected to serve us, but instead, they are serving the rest of the world. 

For example:

Yesterday, my wife Sandi and I shopped at a Costco store in Denver, Colorado. It sounded and felt like shopping in different countries with so many languages being spoken and strange modes of dress.

We encountered immigrants from Pakistan, India, Mexico, China, Vietnam, Somalia, China and another half dozen countries. Since they spoke in their native languages, we felt zero commonality with them. We felt like strangers in our own community.

Let me speak to this harsh reality: India adds 16 million net gain annually to its already bloated 1.3 billion people with no end in sight. China adds 8 to 10 million, net gain, annually. Africa, at 1.1billion expects to hit 2.1 billion within 30 years. In other words, they continue producing more children than they can water, feed, educate or sustain. Result: they create an endless refugee line of desperate immigrants seeking any country that still offers enough water, food and shelter.

What does that mean to you and your kids? It means: no end of the line of immigrants. They won’t stop their endless birth rates, so they use first world counties for infinite immigration to turn our country into the same refugee camps they fled.

I interviewed on the Ross Kaminiski radio show at www.850KOA.com in Denver. I mentioned that the current 1965 Immigration Reform Act injected over 100 million immigrants into our country from 150 countries in the last 55 years. He said, “So what!”

I said, “Beyond the sheer numbers that will be environmentally devastating to our civilization, we face more fragmentation and fracturing than ever before in the history of the United States. We’ve got racism raging more than ever with responses like BLM and Antifa, along with Mexican Mafia, MS-13 invading Los Angeles and pushing African-Americans out. We’ve got Black Flash Mobs in Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver and Minneapolis knocking down and killing European-Americans. We’ve got Somalian drug gangs in Wisconsin and Minnesota. We’ve got Muslim ‘honor killings’ and ‘Female Genital Mutilation’ in America.”

He said something like, “You always face crime and differences no matter where you are in the world.”

“Well,” I said. “If Biden’s amnesty bills or his executive orders come to fruition, we’ll see 1.1 million immigrants annually that increase to 2.0 million legal immigrants annually. That doubles the speed of immigration to overwhelm our society.”

“We can handle another 100 million immigrants and more,” he said.

“But can we double our population from 319 million to the projected 625 million?” I asked him, “What about quality of life, standard of living, water shortages (already experienced in seven states in 2020 with California leading the nightmare), energy, resources and environment?”

“The Earth can handle it, the oceans can handle all the carbon we can pump into them,” Kaminski said.

Later, I wrote a commentary about Superintendent of Schools, Jason Glassman, in Eagle County, Colorado, addressing his plea that Americans become a bi-lingual country. He told me that we must fight racism.

The philosopher Kant said, “The two great dividers are religion and language.”

I told him, “Endless immigration not only creates intractable poverty, illiteracy and linguistic chaos, it feeds racism, grows racism and ultimately splits a country into a multicultural quagmire. Just look at New York City, Chicago, Houston, Miami and Los Angeles.”

He didn’t like that reality check.

I ask you, with our Congress injecting 100 million more immigrants into this country from 150 third world countries around the globe—what do you think will happen in the next three decades when we jump from 330 million to 440 million people in our country?

Do you think it’s going to be a garden bouquet, melting pot, and gloriously multicultural civilization where everyone sings Kumbaya in 100 different languages?

If my experience in Costco this past weekend indicates our future, I suspect we face becoming a “Nation of Strangers.” We can expect more separation, more political disparateness, linguistic separation and more cultural fragmentation than anyone understands.

Tell me if Colorado Governor Lamm’s starting point for the “Eight ways to destroy America” doesn’t ring true.

As to turning ourselves into a multi-lingual society, former Governor Richard D. Lamm said in a speech in Washington, DC which I attended, “Here is how they destroyed their countries: first, turn America into a bilingual or multilingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. The historical scholar Seymour Lipset put it this way, “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, France, UK,  Sweden, Malaysia, Lebanon—all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.”

When Florida, Georgia, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California start suffering from accelerating water shortages because of another 100 million immigrants, how will we speak to those issues with endless language confusion. How will we get onto the same page?

Let me share with you; does Lamm’s speech make sense? Can you see it as clearly as I see it? Do you see the future for your children?

Do you understand when folks cannot obtain enough water or food, they degrade to violence? When you mix different races and languages, you mix different worldviews. How do you think India, China and Pakistan became failed civilizations—so much so—their citizens flee those countries?

Do you think immigrants become as enlightened as our Western Republic once they reach our shores? Do you think they blend into our culture?

Once we face water shortages, gas shortages and more environmental degradation, we Americans, having lost our country to mass immigration, and having become the new minority group by 2042 (that includes European-Americans and African-Americans)—we face irreversible consequences and unsolvable problems.

We could have stopped it. We could have stopped mass immigration by our actions to stop immigration to the “Ingress Equals Egress” formula.

But instead, you’ve got Ross Kaminski’s’ who don’t know their butts from a hole in the ground and Superintendents like Jason Glassman who think we need to change our English language-speaking country into everybody else’s language.

This whole situation won’t end in a pretty picture. I am astounded as to why I am virtually the only journalist in the country who possesses the guts to spell it out. We need hundreds of Americans and journalists, along with radio and television people to address what we face by adding 100,000,000 (million) people to our country. In a nano-second of time in 30 years!

Do you not think it’s beyond stupid, it’s beyond ludicrous, it’s insane and it’s unsustainable environmentally and sociologically? Please join these organizations to stop your children from this untenable future: www.CapsWeb.org; www.NumbersUSA.org; www.TheSocialContract.com; www.FairUS.org; www.Alipac.us.

Call your senators and House member and tell them what you think. You may call for a total shutdown of all immigration. Or, tell them to reduce all legal immigration to “Egress Equals Ingress”, so if 50,000 leave the USA annually, we can allow 50,000 immigrants who are skilled and speak English, and are compatible to our culture: net gain would equal zero: Ph. 1 202 225 0600

Do it for your kids.

© 2020 Frosty Wooldridge – All Rights Reserved

Source: Multiculturalizing America Into a Land of Strangers – News With Views

By John H. Glenn

Despite the state saying there are no plans for a statewide move to remote learning, numerous local systems across the state have begun transitioning to remote learning after a large number of COVID-19 cases were reported in school systems across the state last week.

Source: Many Alabama schools return to remote learning before Thanksgiving

Source: Seven Simple Proposals to Fix Our Broken Elections | Intellectual Takeout

There are many reasons why you may be considering moving to another country. You may move abroad to study or work. Or, you may be looking for adventure, wanting to make new friends, or simply experience other cultures. No matter what the reason is, there are some definite benefits to living abroad. Let’s take a look.

8 Benefits of Living Abroad

Are you on the fence about whether to move abroad? Put together by a community of Black Expats, take these benefits into consideration when making your decision.

1. Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone

Moving to a new country is more like diving out of your comfort zone, rather than simply walking. You will become immersed in a new culture, language, and diverse group of people. You will have new considerations like currency, finances, taxes, and healthcare.  These considerations can be challenging, but they can also help you learn and reach your true potential.

2. Making New Friends

Moving to a new city or country is a great opportunity to make new friends. Moving to a new country, in particular, opens the door for you to meet people from all over the world. There will be differences in the diversity in your home country as compared to the diversity in your new home. Avoid homesickness or loneliness by reaching out to those around you.

3. Learning a New Language

Anyone can take a language course, and most of us have. Unfortunately, these courses generally do not lead to full immersion or fluency. By living in an area where a foreign language is spoken consistently, you are immersed in the language and culture, and are more likely to engage in conversation. This is important to learning a new language and being able to speak with others around you.

4. Gaining a Global Mindset

Whether this is your first trip outside your home country or you are just taking the plunge and moving, your new adventure will undoubtedly change your life. You will gain insight into so many great things like the global market, different cultures, and working internationally.

5. Developing Cultural Awareness

Speaking of cultures, living abroad will help you develop more cultural awareness. That means you may be inspired by the languages and cultures in your new home. This can lead to more adventurous choices in your cuisine, decorating, clothing, or adventures.

6. More Travel Opportunities

Moving to a new country presents a plethora of travel opportunities you might not have otherwise. In your new home, you will have the immediate vicinity to explore, and also the ability to travel in new regions. This is great because, if you live in London, it will be less expensive and easier for you to travel to, say, Paris, than if you live in Salt Lake City.

7. New Career Opportunities

Many different countries offer exciting career opportunities that are not found elsewhere. If you are still studying, use this time abroad to expand your horizons and make connections with people you might want to work for later. If your move is business-related, learn as much as possible about the culture and businesses around you. This helps potential employers see that you are versatile and able to adapt.

8. Personal Growth

Perhaps one of the biggest benefits to living abroad is your ability to grow as a person. Once you leave your homeland behind and set out on new adventures you will gain new perspectives, develop new values, and adopt new viewpoints. This is a process that is challenging and so rewarding. Many people who decide to live abroad report their move being one of the most important decisions they ever made.

Fresh from the Propaganda Ministry of Homeschooling Nation:

In a massive wave of dissatisfaction, parents in record numbers are rescuing their children from public schools and reclaiming familial ownership through nurturing re-education at home sweet home. 

Citing Department of Education statistics showing that since October, almost 11,000 kids have been unsubscribed from the public school rolls in order to be home-schooled, representing a 31% uptick from last year, the Post heavily hints that widespread disgust and disillusionment is driving parents to make the switch and that this amounts to a a no-confidence vote in the system and perhaps even a repudiation of the concept of government-controlled education.

Actually it is not a rebellion at all.  It is a defensive action against the logistical hardships triggered by the pandemic.

The general public overwhelmingly endorses the oversight of government over its mandated policies of inclusion, assessment equity, even-handed disciplinary practices, standards implementation and color-blind access to quality education.

In normal times, an exodus from the public schools might be symptomatic of alienation. But in this Year of Aberrations, such a conclusion is baseless.
Parents are reluctantly choosing to educate their kids at home for sound pragmatic reasons that do not suggest that they believe that public schools are a failure and need to be reinvented, but rather are driven by the pandemic-induced logistical nightmare of structure of essential tasks.

Having given it their best shot, they can no longer meet the exasperating demands of having their lives upended on an almost daily basis. 

Even with a superabundance of patience and adaptability, that cannot around-the-clock await the latest e-mail blast so they can readjusting their calendars, rearrange their commitments and and re-calibrate their energies to adjust to the latest ad hoc configuration.

They need a respite from wondering how many days of school will there be this week and next, which days will they be, will schools be closed all together and will enough notice be given.

They are also bedeviled by unreliable technical devices, capricious apps, scheduling conflicts and overlapping Zoom sessions for siblings.
Parents who started homeschooling their kids during the pandemic are generally not attracted to or fooled by the broader homeschooling movement, who tend to share a politically-charged,  extreme ideology- tainted anathema to formal schooling, especially public schools.
The New York Post would have us believe otherwise.  They are not alone in seeking to capitalize on the present crisis and parlay the desperation of frazzled option-bereft parents into an injection of fresh blood into the homeschooling counter-culture.

In rare and freakish situations, some organizational advocates of homeschooling can serve the public good, however. 

The Post cites the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, which successfully sued the City on behalf of a parent who, after giving proper and timely notification to the DOE of her decision to revert to homeschooling for her child, was harassed by the  Administration for Children’s Services (ACS)  for possible educational neglect because her child had been absent from school for an extended period and the DOE  had not done its job of duly recording the lawful reason.

The Post has a nasty habit of either doubling down on a single anti-public school story or else in the same issue piggy-banking such a deceitful investigative report with a second specimen with a similar disposition. 

Since last Sunday’s homeschooling story couldn’t do the trick of turning thoughtful readers against the public schools, they featured a companion piece in which they detailed “plummeting” public school registration and soaring defections to Catholic and charter schools.

Their archive morgue is filled with gazillions of public school-busting stories.  It’s time to bury them.

Ron Isaac