Notes from Radio NZ Media watch 3May09:
Peter Griffith manager of Science Media Centre recently set up by the Royal Society is puzzled " NIWAknown to encourage the communication of science" ??
Adelia Helit (?) of media watch spoke:
radionzm
AH spoke to some senior scientists (no names) at several CRIs . Some said this sort of restriction on speech was "rife within CRIs"
Some found it "demeaning" to have to ask management permission to speak to media.
AH said as a journalist she would want to know what had been run past management
The old DSIR had a commitment to "Public Good" which may now conflict with commercial interests in the CRI's
AH said she didnt think the sacking was connected with the politics of Climate Change (but how do we know?)
Jack Heineman (Univ of Canterbury) said in a letter to the ChCH "Press" ... scientists have an 'obligation' to communicate their expertise.
Former Chief Govt Statistician Len Cook said the dismissal "looks like bad management"
Helen Hughes, first Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment: "dismayed" at the sacking... Salinger was made a Companion of the Royal Society for his ability to communicate.
Can we get Queen ElizII to throw Mr Morgan, and Sue Suckling into the Tower?
the above notes subject to future transcript rnz will probably post
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glossary
NIWA National institute of Water & Atmosphere
CRI Crown Research Institute
DSIR Dept of Scientific and Industrial Research .. replaced by CRIs in the 1990s
ptaka
Banksterism is not capitalism
What is the mafia don of the banksters, Barack Obama, actually doing? Here, we must focus on his actions not his smooth rhetoric that has beguiled his followers. First, he is not practicing capitalism or socialism, but a variant of feudal extra-economic extraction, leveraging fear mongering to redistribute the social output through taxation among his bankster vassals.
This means the direct economic actors, the banksters and industrialists, have nonmarket access to the means of their reproduction--i.e., the state--and this is why the U.S., is only a quasi-capitalist system. The state as the repository of organized violence in turn uses its vast resources to squeeze (i.e., economic surplus), extra-economically from the populace through both manufactured terror and taxes. The banksters in turn supply credit manufactured out of thin air to supplement the populace's inadequate income to stimulate their consumption.
ptaka always good for a rightous rant
How did Princess Sparkle Pony miss these? Do I detect a pro-Michelle O anti Condi bias?
Michelle O's $540 sneakers
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Short short skirts are in, I forget what that says about the economy
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HIV needs dynamin
After it binds to cell-surface receptors, Melikyan's team has found, HIV is engulfed by membranous sacks called endosomes, in a process called endocytosis. The endosomes then sequester the virus away from the cell's cytoplasm for as long as 30 minutes to an hour. Then, the virus's outer coat fuses with the endosomal membrane, allowing the virus to dump its genetic material into the cytoplasm.
"The main discovery is this unexpected strong preference for endosomal fusion, which wasn't really appreciated," Milikyan says.
....
When the team blocked an enzyme called dynamin, which is involved in endocytosis, it stopped HIV infecting cells.
nature
How come this took 27 years to discover? Dynamin is a sort of cage or scaffold on the inside of the membrane, which seems to self-construct and enable the membrane to invaginate against the 'surface tension' of the membrane. I guess its involved in digestion, scavanging of dead cells, maybe in the liver? Immune cells? Neurotransmitter re-uptake??? what would be the effect of a body-wide Dynamin inhibitor?