Researchers from Rice University have created a mathematical model of evolution in viruses and bacteria that takes into account not only mutation rates, but also recombination rates and fitness functions, allowing for a better theoretical understanding of evolutionary processes.

This kind of work at the data-intensive interface between molecular biology, ecology, statistical mathematics and epidemiology will increasingly shape how scientists approach the study of living beings, and in time will change how we interact with the biosphere. At a moment when the planet's biological systems are changing at an incredibly fast rate, knowing how they do so will be necessary if we are to understand how we can live through and with those changes. The treatment of organisms -healing some, attacking some- won't be enough; we'll need to be able to work with entire species or even ecosystems, at enormous scales and dealing with multiple feedback systems.

Plainly speaking, there's no way we are ever going to manage that level of conceptual complexity without advancing our modeling and data-gathering capabilities, and using them as a privileged input to our global decision-making (that is, political) processes.

It's going to be tricky at best.

(An interesting aside: DARPA is partly founding this research, and if you think it has no defense implications, you haven't really thought about what 'defense' will mean a few years from now.)

When people adapt... and when they don't

What do you get when you combine an aging population with a weakening economy? Well, what do you think?

And lest you think that climate change can be at most an inconvenience, empires have fallen for far less. Civilization as we know it depends on highly productive agricultural and distribution systems, which are in turn sensitive to climate parameters. Failure to mitigate long-term climate change and adapt our food production systems to the climate change already unavoidable will result on massive political upveals of the un-fun kind (try to imagine a functioning modern democracy with chronically inadequate food supplies) , and an untold number of deaths.

The article of the week

Here

A medley of extemporanea

Open-source intel is gaining space in the government's agenda, rightly so, I think, as the trick is not only to collect information, but to make sense of it. Meanwhile, car-patrols aren't nearly as effective as foot-patrols, a fact that some in the US Army are beginning to understand and apply in Iraq, that -as all fourth generation conflicts- is neither war nor policing, but a mixture of both.

Oh, and Latin America is vulnerable to climate change, but we all knew that already. Considering that the region is pretty much near an energy crisis today, I don't think the prospect for the coming decades is very good, despite the relative wealth of natural resources.

Ok, time to re-open the blog

The nice thing about RSS is that it makes possible low-frequency blogs; still, what's the point of keeping this up if I'm not going to post anything?

Let's see where the future leads us.

Alright, alright, so I let the blog fall by the side

Meanwhile, scientists create three-parent embryos. Medical applications aside, in a world of complex sexual and relationship politics, the more tools we have at hand, the better.

When food becomes an issue

The UN is concerned about global food supplies, prices, and the effect of climate disruptions. It's not a trivial question, whether you worry about the impact in human suffering, or about the resulting political instabilities. Right now the main factor behind rising prices seems to be higher demand (in particular from China), so this should lead to rising supplies [*] and hence a new equilibrium. However, climate change will also affect supplies; should the global agricultural system fail to adapt to the changing climate conditions, we'll be looking into a very messy situation.

[*] A caveat here: it depends on specific fiscal and trade policies - few countries have deregulated or economically efficient agricultural sectors, so milleages might and will vary.