Articles tagged with "organism"

On March 21st my Facebook feed brought up the following dire warning:

The Dominion Post recently ran an article about “Glowing GE bacteria” which were “produced illegally in New Zealand using mail-order kits from America”. Perhaps unsurprisingly given that the phrase 'genetically engineered' was mentioned, Green MP Stefan Browning and GE Free New Zealand spokesperson Jon Carapiet chimed in to share their dismay that people/kids were fiddling with complex natural systems and things that posed a threat to our GE-free status (which we aren't). I'm paraphrasing here, but I think that was the sum of it. The usual GE = evil sort of stuff. Let's look at what happened and if it posed any risk to anyone.

Alison Campbell investigates alarming reports on what is living in our dishwashers.

Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origin, by Robert M Hazen. Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, USA. Reviewed by Bernard Howard.

The Gaia hypothesis is still being debated in scientific circles, but has been enthusiastically embraced by the environmental movement. The question is, is it appropriate to propose a planetary consciousness for Gaia, the Earth Goddess, or is it of more interest as an ecological construct?