Scientists Discover New Clue to Chemical Origins of Life
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A ball and stick model of a glucose molecule. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jeffrey Rasmussen)
ScienceDaily (Jan. 24, 2012) — Organic chemists at the University of York have made a significant advance towards establishing the origin of the carbohydrates (sugars) that form the building blocks of life.
A team led by Dr Paul Clarke in the Department of Chemistry at York has re-created a process which could have occurred in the prebiotic world.
Working with colleagues at the University of Nottingham, they have made the first step towards showing how simple sugars -- threose and erythrose -- developed. The research is published in Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry.
All biological molecules have an ability to exist as left-handed forms or right-handed forms. All sugars in biology are made up of the right-handed form of molecules and yet all the amino acids that make up the peptides and proteins are made up of the left-handed form.
The researchers found using simple left-handed amino acids to catalyse the formation of sugars resulted in the production of predominately right-handed form of sugars. It could explain how carbohydrates originated and why the right-handed form dominates in nature.
Dr Clarke said: "There are a lot of fundamental questions about the origins of life and many people think they are questions about biology. But for life to have evolved, you have to have a moment when non-living things become living -- everything up to that point is chemistry.
"We are trying to understand the chemical origins of life. One of the interesting questions is where carbohydrates come from because they are the building blocks of DNA and RNA. What we have achieved is the first step on that pathway to show how simple sugars -- threose and erythrose -- originated. We generated these sugars from a very simple set of materials that most scientists believe were around at the time that life began."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120124092930.htm
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
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Atheistextremist, with the recent discussion of SOPA/PIPA I thought you (and the community) should know that this type of post is not something we want to embrace going forward. We should not be posting entire scripts of news articles to discuss them. You should embrace your fair use right to copyright and comment, critique, satire, or parody small sections of the article you are posting. Then post a link to the article.
I will soon be registered with Copyright.gov so that any organization can file a DMCA quickly and swiftly to our site in which we will embrace the DMCA policies.
Sadly if SOPA/PIPA/ACTA/anything similar passes we're going to have to remove every post on the site that takes content from another site without falling under the fair use law. Atheistextremist isn't the only person posting in this fashion, I hope the other people who do, manage to see this.
Here's an example of a post that falls within my fair use rights but quotes a large chunk: http://www.rationalresponders.com/there_are_two_types_atheist_groups
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Hello my own friend Sapient , Administrator. Hi again, could you give us all a Url on these issues ?
Tho' I think Science Daily, which subs up uni and research institute press releases may be an exception to the rule.
In this case the story I pasted is a rerun of a press release which includes this toenail:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of York, via AlphaGalileo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
I'll inquire with SD what their preferred form is with this sort of thing. Uni press releases are generally available for running with appropriate credits and mentions.
I'll post their reply and everything else I will defer to your preferred form.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
We can post press releases from the university press rooms themselves if we care to go find them or back trace them but SD's own content is copyright.
Links only it is...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Usually a single opening paragraph is more than enough to get people interested, and should be short enough to fall under Fair Use.
"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."
It's odd how fair use works. In our case someone will post a story in full without commentating on it, and then we'll have a bunch of posters commentate. I don't believe posting a single paragraph without commentary, parody, criticism is allowed... however just writing a sentence or two for each paragraph posted would be enough to be fair use.
While I don't suspect Science Daily would ever have a problem with us spreading scientific knowledge, they may have a parent company that at somepoint seeks any copyright violations. There is precedent here with legal teams starting to sue mom and pop bloggers out of existence for small copyright violations. If one of our allies (like Science Daily) decide to protect their copyright by using lawyers, the lawyers are not going to care that we are on the same team on the battlefield of ideas... they're only going to care that there is a settlement in the 4-6 figure territory for them to reach for.
http://righthavenvictims.blogspot.com/
As I said I'm currently setting us up with the DMCA.
I can't expect to curtail everything, but if our everyday members were at least trying to work within the law, it'll really help us continue to exist if we see legislation like SOPA/PIPA/ACTA pass.
Vote for Democrats to save us all from the anti-American Republican party!
Please become a Patron of Brian Sapient
Brian,
Getting all the DMCA things set up is definitely goodness, but if you look at how the articles are posted on the referenced website, they are exactly what I described -- a single (or maybe two) lead-in paragraph and a link to the original material.
"Fair Use" isn't well defined at bar, but that's more a feature than a bug. The objective of the Fair Use doctrine is to allow material to be used, without allowing so much material to be used that the "consumer" doesn't need to go to the source material.
Now, could you wind up on the receiving end of some unpleasantness from a copyright troll? Sure. But as you see in the Righthaven case, the system worked. Yes, it was expensive, but my guess is that if you follow the basic formula of keeping entire articles from being posted, and requesting that posters include links to the source material, you'd have an affirmative defense =and= be able to eat the lunch of anyone who came after you.
And because it's worth saying, I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, it is based on 20+ years of dealing with IP law, please consult competent legal counsel, which I'm not ...
"Obviously I'm convinced of the existence of G-d. I'm equally convinced that Atheists who've led good lives will be in Olam HaBa going "How the heck did I wind up in this place?!?" while Christians who've treated people like dirt will be in some other place asking the exact same question."
Good example of how to use fair use: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/31135
Vote for Democrats to save us all from the anti-American Republican party!
Please become a Patron of Brian Sapient
Classic chicken and egg problem. If RNA were first, then we'd need chiral sugars to preexist protein.
I checked out the Righthaven Victims link that you provided and it seems that many of the cases have been overturned and dismissed. I guess you didn't have too much to worry about after all.
"Now this ... is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there, that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for extermination." - Buddha, the 2nd Noble Truth
I haven't thought enough about this, so it seems that if I'm posting links and extracts, I'd better add some commentary, just in case.