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বুধবার, ৩ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Baby Shower and Easter Brunch in Boston | Sarah Fit

Yep, you read the title right. Sweat, not sweets. Saturday was the first of two baby showers for my sister. Since her husband comes from a large Southie family, we split it up into two so that there were not over 70 guests and she could enjoy talking to everyone. There were over 50 guests on Saturday, but the gift opening was quick and painless featuring tutu?s, bathing suits, bruins jerseys and more clothes than I could have imagined.

For dessert, I had a carrot cupcake which was enormous and tasted delicious. They were from Sweet Tooth on Broadway in Southie, which I love.?I went for a 6 mile run before hand and was glad considering the cupcake was probably more than that. After the shower, I felt the effects of the sugar overload. I?m technically ?insane? when it comes to sugar. I know it makes me feel like crap, but I still can?t say no to the cupcakes. In the middle of the night, I woke up sweating and know it was a result of the garbage I ate during the day.

The party was supposed to be a surprise and I think it was achieved for the most part! There was a fun candy bar that was gone by the end for guests to take home goodie bags. I loaded up on the white chocolate malt balls and jelly beans.?

We were also given a lottery ticket at each of our seats. The baby?s great aunt won $100! I haven?t actually checked my ticket yet but I would assume if there was a big winner I would have heard about it, right? I love this idea for party gifts. My sister?s mother-in-law also bought scratch tickets for the bridal shower back in June.

Saturday morning was the first time I?ve been running in a while. It was nice to enjoy wearing sunblock and my Oakley Warm Up glasses once again. The fresh air felt amazing. I put my Bar Method membership on hold for the next two months to dedicate to my triathlon training. I?m going to be cycling at Recycle Studio, cross training at the Boston Sports Club with their small group training class UXF and running on my own with the occasional swim. I?m meeting with someone tomorrow to talk about training!?

I took Sunday off from working out, as I did Friday too. My body was tired and it felt good to just get some extra sleep.

If you are thinking right now, ?Didn?t your sister just get married?? you are right. The baby was lovely gift from the honeymoon. I have found this to be a pretty popular trend recently among my friends. Is this just me or you too?

Source: http://sarahfit.com/baby-shower-cupcake-sweats/

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মঙ্গলবার, ২ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Microsoft Launches Windows QuickStart Kit For Mac Developers, A $25 USB Stick With Windows 8 Pro And Parallels For Mac

Earlier this year, Microsoft launched modern.IE to help developers ensure that their sites work well with old and new versions of Internet Explorer. The company is adding a few more features to the service today, including a new code scanning tool for sites behind a firewall and virtual machines for IE 10 on Windows 7 and IE8 on Windows XP. The highlight of this release, however, is that for a $25 donation to Watsi.org, Kahn Academy or Code.org and $8 for shipping ($16 if you are outside the U.S.), Microsoft will now send Mac developers its Windows QuickStart Kit with a copy of Windows 8 Pro and Parallels Desktop 8 for Mac on a USB stick. As Sandeep Singhal, Microsoft’s group program manager for Internet Explorer notes in today’s announcement, “the most common way you test across browsers is through virtualization of many browsers and operating system combinations using your favorite virtualization platform, such as Hyper-V, VMWare, VirtualBox, or Parallels.” The cost of purchasing all the necessary software and licenses can make this difficult, however, especially for small startups. That’s why Microsoft is making a limited supply of these Windows 8 and Parallels Desktop for Mac USB sticks available (it’s not clear how limited this supply will be). As a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed when I asked about some more details about this offer, the version of Windows included here is Windows 8 Pro, which could be installed using Bootcamp, too. The OEM version of Windows 8 currently sells for just about $140. Developers can pre-order theirs here?on Swish.com – a site better known for aggregating pre-orders from Kickstarter and Indigogo. To ensure that only developer can order the sticks, Microsoft added a small (but easy to solve) puzzle on the check-out page. The sticks are scheduled to ship by the end of April. The QuickStart order page, by the way, shows a version of QuickStart for iOS developers who want to start building Windows Store apps. It’s not clear if this is a?separate?version of the QuickStart pack that was uploaded by mistake and which is yet to be announced, or if this is the same version as the one Microsoft is talking about today. New Modern.IE Features As part of today’s update to modern.IE, Microsoft now also makes Parallels for Mac images available on modern.IE for all IE versions and has updated the virtual machine installations process to make it

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/FYINn1VZprA/

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Hormone therapy could raise risk of breast cancer | MNN - Mother ...

Women who undergo hormone-replacement therapy (HRT) to treat symptoms of menopause are at increased risk of developing all categories of breast cancer, a new study has found.

In the study, postmenopausal women on hormone replacement therapy that included both estrogen and progestin were 1.5 times more likely to develop breast cancer over an 11-year period compared with women not on the hormones.

HRT increased the risk of breast cancers that have a low risk of recurrence, such as estrogen-receptor-positive cancers, as well as the risk of more aggressive breast cancers, such as triple-negative breast cancer.

The findings back up the results of a study published last year that suggested HRT increased the risk of all categories of breast cancer. Before that study, doctors thought that HRT only increased the risk of less-serious cancers, said study researcher Dr. Rowan Chlebowski, of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute.

The new findings lead to more of a consensus on the link between HRT and breast cancer, and suggest doctors should exercise even more caution when prescribing the treatment, Chlebowski said.

The decision to start HRT should be made on a case-by-case basis, Chlebowski said. Women should speak with their doctors about the risks and benefits of the therapy. The benefits will be greater for those with more severe symptoms of menopause, Chlebowski said.

The National Institutes of Health has stated that if women decide to receive HRT, they should take the lowest dose for the shortest amount of time, and be re-evaluated every six months to see if they still need the treatment.

Recently, several doctors groups said that for women under age 60, or for those who reached menopause within the past 10 years, the benefits of HRT generally outweigh the risks.

The link between HRT use and an increased risk of breast cancer was first seen in 2002, when a large study on the effects of estrogen and progestin therapy was suspended because researchers found the treatment increased the risk of invasive breast cancer..

The new study analyzed information from 41,000 postmenopausal women ages 50 to 79, about half of whom were taking HRT (estrogen plus progestin) at some point in the study, and half who were not on the therapy.

During the study period, about 2,200 women were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. Among those who took HRT, 0.6 percent developed breast cancer each year, compared with 0.42 percent for those who weren?t on HRT.

Women's survival after a breast-cancer diagnosis was about the same for both groups. However, because more women who took HRT developed breast cancer, the findings suggest that the use of HRT may increase deaths from breast cancer in the population as a whole, the researchers said.

The findings support what doctors have already been doing to recognize the risk of breast cancer with HRT, said Dr. Erin Olson, an oncologist at Ohio State's James Cancer Hospital who was not involved in the study.

In an editorial accompanying the study, Catherine Schairer and Louise Brinton, of the National Cancer Institute, said that the new study does not provide definitive evidence that HRT increases the risk of both low-risk and aggressive cancers. To answer this question, more studies will need to take into account the length of time the women are on the therapy.

The study was published in the March 29 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Related on MyHealthNewsDaily and MNN:

Source: http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/hormone-therapy-could-raise-risk-of-breast-cancer

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সোমবার, ১ এপ্রিল, ২০১৩

Immigration deal at hand, focus turns to details

FILE - In this March 12, 2013 file photo, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington. They have settled on a political framework, but now, the lawmakers writing a bipartisan immigration overhaul need to resolve the nitty-gritty _ and, perhaps, keep their parties? political flanks mollified. But even as the final stages of talks begin, before some lawmakers began appearing on Sunday shows to discuss a breakthrough, Rubio warned he was not ready to lend his name ? and political clout ? to such a deal without hashing out the details. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

FILE - In this Wednesday, March 27, 2013 file photo, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., makes a point as he is joined by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Sen. Michael Bennett, D-Colo., during a news conference after their tour of the Mexico border with the United States in Nogales, Ariz. A group of influential U.S. senators shaping and negotiating details of an immigration reform package have vowed to make the legislation public when Congress reconvenes in April. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Big business and big labor have settled on a political framework for an immigration overhaul. Now, the lawmakers writing bipartisan legislation need to resolve the nitty-gritty ? and keep their parties' political flanks mollified.

Business and labor negotiators late last week agreed on a deal that would allow tens of thousands of low-skilled workers into the country and pay them fair wages. It was a last major sticking point before the deal goes to the eight senators ? four Democrats, four Republicans ? to sign off on the details and propose legislation. They are looking to set in motion the most dramatic changes to the faltering U.S. immigration system in more than two decades.

"There are a few details yet. But conceptually, we have an agreement between business and labor, between ourselves that has to be drafted," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

The so-called Gang of Eight's plan would provide a new class of worker visas for low-skilled workers, secure the border, crack down on employers, improve legal immigration and create a 13-year pathway to citizenship for the millions of illegal immigrants already here.

"With the agreement between business and labor, every major policy issue has been resolved," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat who brokered the labor-business deal.

But that effort hasn't taken the form of a bill and the senators searching for a compromise haven't met about the potential breakthrough. They plan to introduce their framework when they return from recess the week of April 8 and move quickly to schedule a vote.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said the hard part is done.

"That doesn't mean we've crossed every 'i' or dotted every 't,' or vice versa," Flake said.

But even as the final stages of talks begin, one member of the group urged colleagues not to get too far ahead of themselves. Just before lawmakers began appearing on Sunday shows to discuss the breakthrough, Sen. Marco Rubio warned he was not ready to lend his name ? and political clout ? to such a deal without hashing out the details.

"Reports that the bipartisan group of eight senators have agreed on a legislative proposal are premature," said Rubio, a Florida Republican who is among the lawmakers working to write the legislation.

Rubio, a Cuban-American who is weighing a presidential bid in 2016, is a leading figure inside his party. Lawmakers will be closely watching any deal for his approval, and his skepticism about the process did little to encourage optimism.

Rubio, who is the group's emissary to conservatives, called the agreement "a starting point" but noted 92 senators from 43 states haven't yet been involved in the process.

That's where figures such as Rubio and assistant Democratic leader Dick Durbin of Illinois come in. Both will be able to give political cover to ? or coax ? members of their party who were not involved in drafting this agreement that could allow an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants to earn U.S. citizenship.

"As to the 11 million, they'll have a pathway to citizenship, but it will be earned, it will be long, and it will be hard, and I think it is fair," Graham said.

A week ago, such a compromise seemed impossible.

Then the pro-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO labor coalition reached its deal late Friday to allow tens of thousands of low-skilled workers into the country to fill jobs in construction, restaurants and hotels.

Schumer negotiated the deal between Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka during a late Friday phone call. Under the compromise, the government would create a new "W'' visa for low-skilled workers, who would earn the same wages paid to Americans or the prevailing wages for the industry they're working in, whichever is higher. The Labor Department would determine prevailing wage based on customary rates in specific localities, so it would vary from city to city.

The detente between the powerful business lobbying group and the nation's leading labor federation still needs senators' approval, including a nod from Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican whose previous efforts came up short. He has returned to the negotiating table yet again.

The immigration debate already has President Barack Obama's attention.

"This is a legacy item for him," said David Axelrod, a longtime political confidant of Obama. "There is no doubt in my mind that he wants to pass comprehensive immigration reform."

Graham was interviewed Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union." Schumer, Flake and Axelrod appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-04-01-Immigration/id-5c76558ed4664dd083f89d4a58b966dd

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Pope makes Easter plea for Mideast peace

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Pope Francis delivered a plea for peace in his first Easter Sunday message to the world, decrying the seemingly endless conflicts in the Middle East and on the Korean peninsula after celebrating Mass at an outdoor altar before more than 250,000 people in flower-bedecked St. Peter's Square.

Francis shared in his flock's exuberance as they celebrated Christianity's core belief that Jesus Christ rose from the dead following crucifixion. After Mass, he stepped aboard an open-topped white popemobile for a cheerful spin through the joyous crowd, kissing babies and patting children on the head.

One admirer of both the pope and of the pope's favorite soccer team, Argentina's Saints of San Lorenzo, insisted that Francis take a team jersey he was waving at the pontiff. A delighted Francis obliged, briefly holding up the shirt, and the crowd roared in approval.

Francis has repeatedly put concern for the poor and suffering at the center of his messages, and he pursued his promotion of the causes of peace and social justice in the Easter speech he delivered from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica, the same vantage point above the square where he was introduced to the world as the first Latin American pope on March 13.

The Roman Catholic leader aimed his Easter greetings at "every house and every family, especially where the suffering is greatest, in hospitals, in prisons." Francis prayed that Jesus would inspire people to "change hatred into love, vengeance into forgiveness, war into peace."

As popes before him have, he urged Israelis and Palestinians to resume peace talks and end a conflict that "has lasted all too long." And, in reflecting on the two-year-old Syrian crisis, Francis asked, "How much suffering must there still be before a political solution" can be found?

The pope also expressed desire for a "spirit of reconciliation" on the Korean peninsula, where North Korea says it has entered "a state of war" with South Korea. He also decried warfare and terrorism in Africa, as well as what he called the 21st century's most extensive form of slavery: human trafficking.

The first pontiff to come from the Jesuits, an order with special concern for the poor, and the first pope to name himself after St. Francis, a medieval figure who renounced wealth to preach to the down-and-out, Francis lamented that the world is "still divided by greed looking for easy gain.

Earlier, wearing cream-colored vestments, Francis celebrated Mass on the esplanade in front of the basilica at an altar set up under a white canopy. He frequently bowed his head as if in silent reflection.

The sun competed with clouds in the sky Sunday, but the square was a riot of floral color in Rome, where chilly winter has postponed the blossoming of many flowers. Yellow forsythia and white lilies shone, along with bursts of lavender and pink, from potted azalea, rhododendron, wisteria and other plants.

Francis thanked florists from the Netherlands for donating the flowers. He also advised people to let love transform their lives, or as he put it, "let those desert places in our hearts bloom."

The Vatican had prepared a list of brief, Easter greetings in 65 languages, but Francis didn't read them. The Vatican didn't say why not, but has said that the new pope, at least for now, feels at ease using Italian, the everyday language of the Holy See. Francis also has stressed his role as a pastor to his flock, and, as Bishop of Rome, Italian would be his language.

The pontiff improvised his parting words to the crowd. He repeated his Easter greeting to those "who have come from all over the world to this square at the heart of Christianity" as well as to those "linked by modern technology," a reference to TV and radio coverage as well as social media.

Francis added that he was especially remembering "the weakest and the neediest" and praying that all of humanity be guided along "the paths of justice, love and peace."

In another departure from Easter tradition, Francis won't be heading for some post-holiday relaxation at the Vatican's summer palace in Castel Gandolfo, in the hills southeast of Rome. That retreat is already occupied by his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who went there in the last hours of his papacy on Feb. 28. Benedict became the first pope in 600 years to resign from the position, and eventually is to move back to the Vatican, after a convent there is readied for him.

Francis so far has declined to move into Benedict's former apartment in the Apostolic Palace, into the rooms whose studio overlooks St. Peter's Square. He is still in the Vatican hotel where earlier this month he was staying along with other cardinals participating in the secret conclave to choose Benedict's successor.

While Francis has just begun to make his mark on the church, it is plain he has little desire to embrace much of the pomp customarily associated with the office.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pope-makes-easter-pleas-mideast-peace-101523086.html

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Fire Emblem: Awakening Treasure Guide: Paralogue 10 | Video ...

reading: Home ? Video Games ? Fire Emblem: Awakening Treasure Guide: Paralogue 10

By Francesco De MeoPublished: 30 March 2013 7:24 PM UTC

Posted in: Video Games

Tags: fire emblem awakening, francesco de meo, guide, nintendo, paralogue, treasure

Now that we have covered how to recruit all the characters available in Fire Emblem: Awakening it?s time to cover another tricky aspect of the game: treasures. Fire Emblem veterans know how hard it can be to get some treasures in the series: most of the times they?re placed in hard to reach spots and guarded by powerful units. Other times you?ll have a limited time to get these treasures since some quick ruffians will get in the way of your treasure collecting endeavors and steal the treasures before you even have a chance to get them. Getting treasures on map it?s not something that?s required to complete the game but some of the rewards are definitely going to help you in some of the harder story missions. To be able to beat the ruffians to the treasure you?ll need a sound strategy and some quick moving units: while they may be getting the treasures before you, you?ll still have a chance to obtain the rewards if you manage to defeat the Ruffians. Aerial mounted units are the best moving units of the game as far as movement range is concerned; you can also use thieves to move quickly, but not as quickly as the winged units. In this guide we will be covering all the treasures available in the game: the ones in the chests are the most useful but since we?re completionists, we will be covering all of them. A game?s not completed once everything has been discovered folks!

Paralogue 10 ? Ambivalence

To access this Paralogue you will have to give Cordelia a support relationship of S. Once you do, Paralogue 10 will be available for play. As far as treasures are concerned, Paralogue 10 is pretty disappointing, just like the Paralogue chapter coming before it. There are only two chests in this mission and, while both are unguarded, they only contain two Bullions (M). One of the chests, the one on the upper right side of the map, has a door before it, making a Thief or a character with the Lockpicking skill an absolute necessity, unless you have so many keys to waste on these quite standard rewards. As stated already, there are no ruffians so take all the time you need to get these treasures. Skipping them altogether is also an option: the contents are quite avarage and you won?t be damaged at all if you decide to not get these two rewards.

Article from Gamersyndrome.com

Fire Emblem: Awakening Treasure Guide: Paralogue 8
Fire Emblem: Awakening Treasure Guide: Paralogue 2
Fire Emblem: Awakening Treasure Guide: Paralogue 4
Fire Emblem: Awakening Treasure Guide: Paralogue 5
Fire Emblem: Awakening Treasure Guide: Paralogue 1

Source: http://gamersyndrome.com/2013/video-games/fire-emblem-awakening-treasure-guide-paralogue-10/

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How Ancient Life May Have Come About

A family tree unites a diverse group of individuals that all carry genetic vestiges from a single common ancestor at the base of the tree. But this organizational structure falls apart if genetic information is a communal resource as opposed to a family possession.

Some evidence suggests that early evolution may have been based on a collective sharing of genes. A group of researchers are now searching for clear genetic vestiges from this communal ancestry.

But it's hard to shake our fascination with family trees.

My father used to travel for work, and when he arrived in a new city, he'd open up the phone book and check for anyone listed with our uncommon last name. Occasionally he'd get a hit and brazenly call them up to ask: "Are we related?"

The answer was always yes, with the common link often being my great grandfather.

Like my father, biologists are curious about family ties, but they go about it in a more systematic way. Rather than phone books, they sift through genetic codes from humans to bacteria and a lot in between. The main question is: Are the commonly held genes similar enough to point to a common origin?

The answer has always been yes. The implication is that we all belong to some universal tree of life. And at the base of this tree ? some have imagined ? there sits a mild-mannered microbe that lived more than 3 billion years ago, unaware that its genes would be the starting point of an entire planet's worth of highly differentiated life.

However, this organism, the so-called last universal common ancestor (or LUCA), may be just a fantasy.

"Our perspective is that life emerged from a collective state, and so it is not at all obvious that there is one single organism which was ancestral," said Nigel Goldenfeld from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The organisms belonging to this collective state would have shared genetic information from neighbor to neighbor, rather than solely from parent to offspring. Goldenfeld is leading a new NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) team that aims to provide a clearer understanding of this early stage of evolution.

"We are hoping to find fossils of the collective state in the genomes of organisms," Goldenfeld said.

Goldenfeld's team will be performing genetic studies that will try to tease out signatures of community-based evolution. They will complement this field and laboratory work with theoretical modeling and computer simulations.

"The ultimate goal is to understand how our planet's biochemistry is an instantiation of the universal laws of life, thus addressing the question of whether life is an inevitable and thus widespread outcome of the laws of physics," Goldenfeld said.

A time before Darwinism

It might sound strange that an organism's genetic code could be the result of "crowdsourcing." We are more familiar with traditional reproduction, as practiced by the birds and the bees. [Code of Life: 10 Animal Genomes Deciphered]

In so-called "vertical gene transfer," an organism inherits its genome from its parents, but it does not receive an exact copy. Small changes enter the code through reproductive mixing and mutations. This "descent with modification," as Darwin put it, eventually allows a population of interbreeding organisms (or species) to evolve.

If every snippet of DNA was solely the product of descent with modification, then every organism could be placed on a tree of life stemming from a single ancestor. But as it turns out, "different genes go back to different ancestors," said Peter Gogarten of the University of Connecticut, who has done extensive work on comparative genetics.

How is that possible? It can happen if organisms share genes. Imagine a gene belonging to members of a specific family tree. One day, this gene becomes isolated and gets picked up by another organism with a different family tree. No reproduction between partners takes place ? only an "adoption" of a specific gene.

This so-called "horizontal gene transfer" is quite common among bacteria and archaea, as exemplified by antibiotic resistance. When a specific bacterium develops a defense against some drug, the corresponding gene can pass horizontally to others in the same colony.

A 2008 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that 80 percent of the genes in bacteria were horizontally transferred at some point in the past.

Complex organisms also exhibit evidence of horizontal (or lateral) gene transfer, albeit to a lesser extent. Researchers have shown that ancient ancestors of plants and animals "swallowed up" other bacteria to form symbiotic relationships, which eventually resulted in specialized cellular components, such as mitochondria and chloroplasts.

In his work, Gogarten has shown that horizontal gene transfer turns the tree of life into a thick bush of branches that interweave with each other. Many of these branches terminated long ago due to extinction, but some of their genes live on in us, thanks to horizontal gene transfer.

Several studies suggest that horizontal gene transfer was more prevalent in the past when nothing but single-celled organisms inhabited the Earth.

"I like to think of early life as being more like an undifferentiated slime mold," Goldenfeld said. "Such a communal form of life would have no meaningful family tree, because it is the community that varies in descent, not individual organismal lineages." [[7 Surprising Theories on the Origin of Life]

Evolving evolution

The late Carl Woese, a colleague of Goldenfeld, was one of the first scientists to propose that early life leaned heavily on horizontal gene transfer. Woese passed away in December of last year. He is perhaps best-remembered for classifying life into the now-well-accepted domains of bacteria, eukaryotes (plants, animals, fungi and protists) and archaea.

In 1987, Woese wrote about the consequences of rampant horizontal gene transfer. In such a scenario, "a bacterium would not actually have a history in its own right: It would be an evolutionary chimera."

A "chimera" is the name of a creature from Greek mythology that mixed together features of a lion, a goat and a snake. This hybridization presumably gave the chimera an advantage over its "competitors."

In a 2006 PNAS paper, Kalin Vetsigian, Woese and Goldenfeld showed that microbial chimeras may also have an advantage over their biological counterparts. The researchers used computer models to demonstrate that the genetic code could evolve more efficiently if organisms shared their genes collectively. Horizontal gene transfer turned out to be a better "innovation-sharing protocol" than vertical (Darwinian) transfer.

Now, with his NAI team, Goldenfeld wants to confirm these simulations with genetic studies. Specifically, they will target archaea, whose genes have yet to be scrutinized as closely as those from the other domains, Goldenfeld said.

The group is particularly interested in the question of how the ability to evolve originally developed. The "evolution of evolution" sounds like a chicken-and-egg problem ? especially if you think, as Goldenfeld does, that life is by definition something capable of evolving.

However, evolution can utilize different mechanisms to achieve the same goal. Goldenfeld's team will try to recover some of life's former evolutionary phases by stressing cells and then seeing how their genomes rearrange in response.

Universal biology

However, DNA evidence is just one aspect of this five-year research project.

"We want to understand how evolution works before there were species or maybe even genes," Goldenfeld said. "So this is going beyond 'origin of species' approaches to evolution, such as population genetics."

How does one study evolution without genetics? One considers the "rules of the game" that the genetic code is just one manifestation of. Goldenfeld calls this "universal biology." It is an attempt to distill from our specific biochemistry the general physical laws that animate matter.

Being a physicist, Goldenfeld gives the example of thermodynamics. Life must obey conservation of energy and the law of increasing entropy, which will certainly influence how organisms optimize their use of resources.

Other rules involve how to control the amount of variation in the genome from one generation to the next. Too little variation, and organisms can't adapt to changes in the environment. Too much variation, and organisms can't retain useful traits.

The team can place different sets of rules into a computer simulation and see what sort of artificial life appears. Goldenfeld believes that formulating the principles of universal biology may help answer one of the biggest questions of all.

"We would like to have a better understanding of why life exists at all." Goldenfeld said. "Is it a phenomenon that should be generic, like the formation of a crystalline solid, or is it something rare and bizarre?"

This is of special interest to astrobiologists, who wonder about the likelihood that we are not alone. If life is eventually found elsewhere, Goldenfeld thinks we'll have a few things in common. [Mars Discovery Raises Question: What Is Life?]

"The principles of universal biology should be applicable to all life irrespective of whether it is carbon chemistry-based or something stranger," he said.

Something stranger? Okay, so maybe that means they won't be in the phone book.

This story was provided by?Astrobiology Magazine, a web-based publication sponsored by the NASA astrobiology program.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ancient-life-may-come-181314142.html

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