Monday, March 21, 2016

Weekly Links March 21 th, 2016



“MUST READ”
Handful of Biologists Went Rogue and Published Directly to Internet While several influential journals, including Science and Nature, have a stated policy of treating preprints on an equal footing with papers that have not been posted elsewhere, few…
    • Unlike physicists, for whom preprints became a default method of communicating discoveries in the 1990s, biomedical researchers typically wait more than six months to disseminate their work while they submit it — on an exclusive basis — to the most prestigious journal they think might accept it for publication. If, as is often the case, it is rejected, they try another journal. As a result, it can sometimes take years to publish a paper
DISRUPTION, REVOLUTION
    • regulators are still working out how to deal with such creatures, particularly those intended for food or for release into the wild. Concerns abound about safety and ecological impacts. Even the US director of national intelligence has weighed in, saying that the easy access, low cost and speedy development of genome editing could increase the risk that someone will engineer harmful biological agents.
  • In the CRISPR patent fight, the Broad Institute scores big
In the CRISPR patent fight, the Broad Institute scores big in early motions The CRISPR patent dispute has two things in common with the 2016 presidential race: it’s going to last until at least November; and following who’s up and who’s down is enou…
    • To recap: The Broad was granted about a dozen CRISPR patents for genome editing. UC claimed it, and not the Broad, was entitled to them
Under the law at the time, patents go to the first to invent something (they now go to the first to file). The Broad paid for an accelerated review of its key patent application, and was awarded its first in April 2014. UC did not pay for such expedition, and so was left in the dust when that decision came out
The “interference proceeding” now underway at UC’s request will resolve which organization is entitled to the key CRISPR patents.
Is do-it-yourself CRISPR as scary as it sounds? Media reports about the gene-editing technique called CRISPR-Cas9 have generated some doomsday scenarios that the technology would be used, as Wired magazine wrote, to create “designer babies, invasive…
    • Indeed, the current culture of responsibility among DIY biologists, their collaborative style of working and the fact that community labs are open spaces in which everyone can see what is going on reduce, if not eliminate, doomsday scenarios of mutant organisms escaping from basements and causing harm
Here’s what several other experts had to say about do-it-yourself CRISPR
TOOLS/TECHNIQUES
    • Welcome to genetube – a space dedicated to shaping fresh, informative, surprising and shareable bite sized insights about DNA and genetics. Not for profit; just for humankind.

HEALTH/MEDECINE
Screening for Alzheimer’s Gene Tests the Desire to Know Marty and Matt Reiswig, two brothers in Denver, knew that Alzheimer’s disease ran in their family, but neither of them understood why. Then a cousin, Gary Reiswig, whom they barely knew, wrote …
tags: Pocket
COMPANIES
Editas biotech stock drops by 26 percent over CRISPR patent dispute Gene editing outfit Editas has been one of the most successful tech IPOs of 2016 so far, with shares skyrocketing up 130 percent shortly after the company’s public debut.
tags: Pocket
Can Pharnext make a rare disease drug cheaper? An estimated 2.8 million people worldwide have been diagnosed with a disease known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disorder, an inherited muscular atrophy condition. The disease causes debilitating muscle weakne…
tags: Pocket
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
    • So-called "autonomous vehicles" have for years been a distant dream but technology advances and a push by Google (GOOGL.O), with its huge financial resources, to introduce a prototype have shifted the race to build them up a gear.
Analysts at Exane BNP Paribas have said they see a $25 billion market for automated driving technology by 2020, with vehicle intelligence becoming "the key differentiating factor". But the brokerage does not expect fully automated cars to hit the road until 2025 or 2030, in part due to regulatory hurdles.
Facebook is eating the world Something really dramatic is happening to our media landscape, the public sphere, and our journalism industry, almost without us noticing and certainly without the level of public examination and debate it deserves.
    • Social media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed everything. It has swallowed political campaigns, banking systems, personal histories, the leisure industry, retail, even government and security. The phone in our pocket is our portal to the world. I think in many ways this heralds enormously exciting opportunities for education, information, and connection, but it brings with it a host of contingent existential risks.
  • Inside the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Pt. 1 | Rolling Stone
Inside the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: A Special Report, Pt. 1 Has the artificial intelligence revolution taken us to the verge of witnessing the birth of a new species? How long until machines become smarter than us?
tags: Pocket
Inside the Artificial Intelligence Revolution: A Special Report, Pt. 2 How much control of our lives do we want to give over to machines – and to the corporations that build and operate them? It's a weird feeling, cruising around Silicon Valley in a…
tags: Pocket

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