Shocking if the events in cologne are going to be a re-occuring thing. If the mayor in indeed being translated/quoted correctly it is the most awful example of victim blaming I have ever seen by a person in power!. I consider myself to belong to the left, but it is as if a segment of the left has decided to go completely teaparty-level bonkers.

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Interesting new nature article on the creation of self-replication molecules in the lab (abiogenesis)

by bohm in

jw
friends

full text here:.

we have been able to monitor in real time and at a molecular level the diversification of self-replicating molecules into two distinct sets that compete for two different building blocks (food) and so capture an important aspect of the process by which species may arise.

as diversification into sets takes place on the timescale of weeks and can be investigated at the molecular level, this work opens up new opportunities for experimentally investigating the process through which species arise both in real time and with enhanced detail.. how new species emerge in nature is still incompletely understood and difficult to study directly.

bohm

Full text here:

http://www.nature.com/nchem/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nchem.2419.html

abstract:

How new species emerge in nature is still incompletely understood and difficult to study directly. Self-replicating molecules provide a simple model that allows us to capture the fundamental processes that occur in species formation. We have been able to monitor in real time and at a molecular level the diversification of self-replicating molecules into two distinct sets that compete for two different building blocks (‘food’) and so capture an important aspect of the process by which species may arise. The results show that the second replicator set is a descendant of the first and that both sets are kinetic products that oppose the thermodynamic preference of the system. The sets occupy related but complementary food niches. As diversification into sets takes place on the timescale of weeks and can be investigated at the molecular level, this work opens up new opportunities for experimentally investigating the process through which species arise both in real time and with enhanced detail.

How new species emerge in nature is still incompletely understood and difﬁcult to study directly. Self-replicating

molecules provide a simple model that allows us to capture the fundamental processes that occur in species formation.

We have been able to monitor in real time and at a molecular level the diversiﬁcation of self-replicating molecules into

two distinct sets that compete for two different building blocks (‘food’) and so capture an important aspect of the process

by which species may arise. The results show that the second replicator set is a descendant of the ﬁrst and that both sets

are kinetic products that oppose the thermodynamic preference of the system. The sets occupy related but complementary

food niches. As diversiﬁcation into sets takes place on the timescale of weeks and can be investigated at the molecular

level, this work opens up new opportunities for experimentally investigating the process through which species arise both

in real time and with enhanced detail.