British scientists get the green light for human gene editing

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority in Britain—often referred to as the "fertility regulator"—has just given scientists a go-ahead to genetically modify human embryos. Research of a purely experimental nature will be carried out at the Francis Crick Institute in London. Scientists will nevertheless be prevented from implanting such modified embryos into women.

Experiments will be carried out in the first seven days after fertilisation, using the developed structure of the fertilized egg called a blastocyst, composed of several hundred cells.

The concept of gene editing came into existence through an experimental method known as clustered regularly-interspaced short palindromic repeats, abbreviated as CRISPR, and pronounced as "crisper". It is generally referred to as the CRISPR/Cas system, where Cas is the name of a protein. The following short video provides us with a summary of this fundamental and all-important methodology in genetics.

Omo, a delightful white giraffe

Here's a fascinating photo of Omo, a white giraffe, from Paul Allen (philanthropist, investor, entrepreneur, author, Seahawks & Blazers team owner, guitarist, neuroscience supporter, space pioneer and Microsoft co-founder):

Hard to believe that this vessel can't be tugged

I know nothing about the task of attaching a cable to an abandoned ghost ship, the Modern Express, and then tugging it to a desired location. But I hardly imagined that it might be rocket science...

The vessel has been drifting around now for six days and nights in the Gulf of Gascony, and we're told that the weather has been too rough to grab hold of the stricken ship. There's a vague possibility, if the weather calms down, that a cable can still be attached to the Modern Express, enabling it to be towed away. If this is not the case, observers believe that the vessel is likely to run aground on a sandy French beach between Monday evening and the following day.

We're told that there'll be no oil spill, since the vessel is carrying a huge stock of timber (which surely shifted during the rough weather, causing the vessel to lean over) and merely 300 tons of fuel. Local people seem to be awaiting stoically, almost calmly, the impending shipwreck. And I keep on wondering what's going to happen to all that splendid timber, as soon as it floats ashore...

BREAKING NEWS [Monday 1 Feb 2016 14h30] The crew of a Spanish tugboat named Centaurus has succeeded in fixing a cable aboard the Modern Express, which is now being towed successfully in a westerly direction towards Spain at a speed of over 5 km/h.

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English Channel seen from space

Here's a photo of the English Channel, looking towards the east, viewed from above the tip of Brittany. The image was obtained by the first official British astronaut, Tim Peake, aboard the International Space Station, orbiting the Earth at an average altitude of 350 km.

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Here are some helpful geographical labels:

I'm not good at identifying landmarks in photos taken from space, but I would imagine that the big dot at the bottom of the photo, above the "o" in Astro, is lighting from the city of Brest. Above it, one of the dimmer dots on the coastline would indicate the city of Saint-Brieuc.

During my recent convalescence with my son François at Plouha (Côtes d'Armor), I was constantly intrigued by our splendid vision of the English Channel, whose waters lapped the base of the granite cliffs just a few hundred metres in front of the house. We were charmed by the presence of all kinds of small vessels: mainly pleasure yachts and fishing boats. But I often wondered why we never caught a glimpse of giant cargo ships and tankers moving along the busy lanes of the Channel. François showed me how to use my powerful binoculars to get a glimpse of an exotic place near the horizon known as the Roches-Douvres Lighthouse.

Inevitably, since this name means "Dover Rocks", I immediately asked my son a naive question: "Is that old lighthouse located in the vicinity of the English town of Dover?" François said no, not at all. So, I never understood (and still don't) why the name of this shelf of rocks, off the coasts of Brittany and Normandy (between the islands of Bréhat and Guernsey), should evoke the distant town of Dover. In the following map, the lower tip of the red blob indicates the location of the Roches-Douvres Lighthouse, whereas a green star marks my viewpoint at Plouha in Brittany.

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This map of the English Channel makes it clear that, from my son's house in Plouha, I was unlikely to catch sight (even with powerful binoculars) of the stream of great vessels moving along the wide sea-lanes between France and England.

The fist-shaped peninsula of Cotentin, jutting out from Normandy, includes a pointed finger that seems to be saying "piss off" to any ship's captain moving too close to the French coastline. Fortunately, no courageous Allied commander was led astray by this warning on D-Day, 1944, when the outstretched hand formed rather a sign of V for Victory.

Earth collided with another planet, Theia, creating the Moon

About 100 million years after the creation of our planet, a collision occurred between the Earth and a baby planet, Theia, The smaller planet disappeared inside the Earth, but fragments of the amalgam flew off into space, where they coagulated into a new body: the Moon.

A recent study carried out by researchers from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) has revealed that the collision was strictly head-on, which explains why the chemical composition of Moon rocks is quite similar to that of Earth rocks. If Theia and Earth had collided obtusely, then much of the Moon would have been composed mainly of Theia, meaning that the chemical compositions of the Moon and the Earth would have been significantly different.

Dragon robbers in France are thrown into jail

Four people accused of stealing a young specimen of the Indonesian Komodo Dragon have been thrown into jail, to await their trial.

The accused robbers found their innocent victim in a well-known reptile park in Pierrelatte (Drôme). It appears that their sole motivation for stealing the young lizard was their eagerness to keep the reptile as a pet. However the dumb buggers had no idea of how to look after a Komodo Dragon, and they locked him up in a cellar where he soon died.

There are countless sad tragedies of this kind, which reveal that idiotic specimens of Homo sapiens ignore the elementary nature and needs of certain exotic cousins from the animal world.

To my mind, there's an obvious golden rule:

If you don't understand the animal, don't touch it !

Place in North Sydney where I met up in 1957 with my first IBM computer

Towards the end of 1957, after my second year of studies in the Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney, my student friend Michael Arbib informed me of his recent encounter with the Australian branch of a US company named IBM. Michael had been offered a vacation job with this company, and he invited me to make a similar request. And that's how, in a brand-new North Sydney skyscraper (in 1957, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere), I came to meet up with the IBM 650 machine and a programming language called Fortran. I was therefore just over 17 years old when I started my life-long activities as a computer programmer.

The Miller Street building still exists today, looking small and old-fashioned in the vicinity of modern constructions.

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At that time, to travel between the IBM offices and the central Sydney business zone, I used to take a tram across the bridge.

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In that photo of a pair of tram lines on the eastern (Pacific Ocean) side of the bridge, we're looking south towards the main city. The tram on the right is moving northwards to the destination indicated below the driver's window: Frenchs Road in the nearby suburb of Willoughby, just beyond North Sydney. Further to the left, we catch a glimpse of the rear end of a tram moving towards the city, whose surprisingly low skyline can be seen further on. Those two tram lines were soon replaced—as Sydney residents now realize—by automobile lanes.

Today, as I sit here in the French countryside, in front of my computer, it's most moving for me to write a few lines about that distant corner of the world where I came into contact with an archaic IBM computer in 1957. In fact, I spent little time at that North Sydney address, because the company soon moved to a more convenient building in Palmer Street, Darlinghurst. It was there that I worked for much of the time (followed by a short period in the Lidcombe offices of IBM) up until my departure for the Old World at the start of 1962.

When the guest happens to be carrying a fat checkbook in his back pocket...

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The French president François Hollande makes a diplomatic effort
by wearing appropriate clothes and banning champagne:

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And how many Airbus aircraft do you wish to purchase ?

118 ! That's nice...

Genetic light starts to shine upon schizophrenia

For the very first time in the history of psychiatry, US researchers in genetics and neurology feel that recent studies might reveal the causes of schizophrenia, which has always been a widespread but mysterious affliction in our modern societies. In the USA, there are over two million victims of this psychiatric disorder, giving rise to delusions, emotional withdrawal, hallucinations and a decline in cognitive abilities. Their troubles can be attenuated slightly by medical substances, but cannot yet be cured. Well, promising research has been carried out recently by scientists from the Harvard Medical School, Boston Children’s Hospital and a research institute linked to Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and their results have been published in the journal Nature. But it is still far too early to, in the immediate future, to envisage any revolutionary methods of treatment.

Human synapses between brain neurons, with C4 proteins marked in green.

Researchers examined the ways in which genes can increase a person’s risk of developing schizophrenia. They examined a gene in our immune system called complement component 4, referred to as C4, whose structure varies considerably between individuals. It was found that certain people with specific forms of the C4 gene stand a higher chance of developing schizophrenia.

That risk is tied to a natural process called synaptic pruning, in which the maturing brain discards weak or redundant connections between neurons. And individuals whose C4 genes increase that pruning effect appear to have a greater chance of developing schizophrenia.

Christiane Taubira resigns from the French government

The French justice minister Christiane Taubira resigned this morning, and was rapidly replaced by the Socialist Jean-Jacques Urvoas.

The newspaper Le Monde stated explicitly that she had in fact "slammed the door" on her colleagues, which merely means that she had made a personal decision to leave, as opposed to the idea of being kicked out by the president and/or the prime minister. It's common knowledge that Taubira has been strongly opposed to the government's decision to withdraw the French citizenship of certain terrorists with dual nationality. Indeed, a parliamentary debate will be starting today on that subject, and it's clear that Taubira has chosen deliberately this moment for her resignation.

Christiane Taubira is an exceptionally brilliant individual who has never been accustomed to "suffer fools gladly" (expression invented by Saint Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians).