VARDAMAN VIRTUAL FORESTRY COMPANY

The Most Direct Link to Knowledge Workers in the Southeast Forest Economy

All Friday Reports are posted at www.vardaman.com/friday.php

Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company

FRIDAY REPORT OF 11/18/05

The Most Direct, Frequent Link to Knowledge Workers in the Eastern Forest Economy

“DID LIFE COME FROM ANOTHER WORLD?
By David Warmflash and Benjamin Weiss”

Title and quotes are from 11/05 print edition of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN:

“Most scientists have long assumed that life on Earth is a home-grown phenomenon. According to the conventional hypothesis, the earliest living cells emerged as a result of chemical evolution on our planet billions of years ago in a process called abiogenesis…

“Over the past 20 years scientists have determined that more than 30 meteorites found on Earth originally came from the Martian crust, based on the composition of gases trapped within some of the rocks. Meanwhile biologists have discovered organisms durable enough to survive at least a short journey inside such meteorites. Although no one is suggesting that these particular organisms actually made the trip, they serve as a proof of principle. It is not improbable that life could have arisen on Mars and then come to Earth, or the reverse…

“Anaxagoras, a Greek philosopher who lived 2,500 years ago, proposed a hypothesis called ‘panspermia’ (Greek for ‘all seeds’), which posited that all life, and indeed all things, originated from the combination of tiny seeds pervading the cosmos…

“In its modern form, the panspermia hypothesis addresses how biological material might have arrived on our planet but not how life originated in the first place…

“In the early stages of life’s evolution, all the enzymes may have been RNAs, not proteins. Because RNA enzymes could have manufactured the first proteins without the need for preexisting protein enzymes to initiate the process, abiogenesis is not the chicken-and-egg problem that it was once thought to be. A prebiotic system of RNAs and proteins could have gradually developed the ability to replicate its molecular parts…

“This new understanding of life’s origins has transformed the scientific debate over panspermia. It is no longer an either-or question of whether the first microbes arose on Earth or arrived from space. In the chaotic early history of the solar system, our planet was subject to intense bombardment by meteorites containing simple organs. The young Earth could have also received more complex molecules with enzymatic functions, molecules that were prebiotic but part of a system that was already well on its way to biology. After landing in a suitable habitat on our planet, these molecules could have continued their evolution to living cells. In other words, an intermediate scenario is possible: life could have roots both on Earth and in space…

“A tiny percentage of the Martian rocks arriving on Earth’s surface – about one out of every 10 million – will have spent less than a year in space. Within three years of the impact event, about 10 fist-size rocks weighing more than 100 grams complete the voyage from Mars to Earth. Smaller debris, such as pebble-size rocks and dust particles, are even more likely to make a quick trip between planets; very large rocks do so much less frequently.

“Could biological entities survive this journey? First, let us consider whether microorganisms could live through the ejection process from the meteorite’s parent body. Recent laboratory impact experiments have found that certain strains of bacteria can survive the accelerations and jerks (rates of changes of acceleration) that would be encountered during a typical high-pressure ejection from Mars…

“Planetary geologists formerly believed that any impact ejecta with speeds exceeding the Martian escape velocity would almost certainly be vaporized or at least completely melted. This idea was later discounted, though, following the discovery of unmelted, largely intact meteorites from the moon and Mars. These findings led H. Jay Melosh of the University of Arizona to calculate that a small percentage of ejected rocks could indeed be catapulted from Mars via impact without any heating at all…

“All we can say with any certainty is that by 2.7 billion years ago, or perhaps several hundred million years earlier, life-forms were thriving on Earth…

“Whether terrestrial life emerged on Earth or through biological seeding from space or as the result of some intermediate scenario, the answer would be meaningful. The combination of Mars-Earth panspermia would suggest that life, once started, could readily spread within a star system. If, on the other hand, researchers find evidence of Martian organisms emerged independently of terrestrial life, it would suggest that abiogenesis can occur with ease throughout the cosmos. What is more, biologists would be able to compare Earth organisms with alien forms and develop a more general definition of life. We would finally begin to understand the laws of biology the way we understand the laws of chemistry and physics – as fundamental properties of nature.”

These tiny excerpts are from an outstanding six-page article with four helpful illustrations in the November 2005 print edition of SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. To access it, click on http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00073A97-5745-1359-94FF83414B7F0000, scroll down to the article title on the left-hand side, and click on it.

“A TUSSLE OVER AMERICA’S INTERNET HEGEMONY”

Our title and quotes below are from the 11/15/05 article in The Economist:

“Nothing has done as much to hasten the spread around the world of fact, fiction or rumour as the internet. The rapid dissemination of information from a wide variety of sources, from reputable news organizations to lone bloggers, has fostered an openness unforeseen when the internet was created as part of an American military-research project in the 1960s. And the web is widely accepted as a key component of the technological revolution that has boosted global productivity and wealth...

“The internet is managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a private-sector body that operates under contract from America’s government. The technological matters that it oversees may appear to be dull. But co-ordination of the domain-name system (such as .com and .net), national addresses (such as France’s .fr) and routing numbers (which identify traffic on the internet) carries wider significance. For example, many countries were scandalised when ICANN considered the .xxx suffix for pornographic websites. (It has suspended implementation for the time being.)

“…Although nominally under the authority of America’s Department of Commerce, ICANN’s directors hail from all over the world, and it already has a governmental advisory committee (though this is largely toothless). Technical issues are thrashed out in the open and America’s government has refrained from direct intervention. The private-sector solution may not be perfect, but it is at least workable.

“…many of the countries that have called loudest for America to give up its role in the running of the internet are those that are most keen to stop their citizens accessing ‘undesirable’ material. China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and a host of other nations are guilty of censoring the content available to web users, their aim being less to protect the population from depraved content than to deter nascent democratic movements. The involvement of such repressive regimes in running the internet would seem at best distasteful to more assiduous guardians of human rights, and at worst seriously damaging to its workings…

“…But one thing is clear: as devices such as mobile phones and personal-digital assistants (PDAs) become more pervasive, they are poised to infiltrate poor countries to a degree that few appreciate. And helping the world’s poor get access to telecommunications and technology will have a far greater impact in the long run than bickering over who runs the internet.”

To read the complete article, click on http://www.economist.com/agenda/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5163539

OUR BLOG AND YOURS

Do you keep a blog? We hope so, for you read the things we write about and are therefore interested in the subjects that interest us. We are flattered, and we’d also very much like to read what you write about.

We don’t register on big globes of blogs for it may take us all day to examine all of them, and we might not understand much of it. Therefore, we hope you will send us the address of what you’ve written even remotely connected with the forest economy of the eastern United States. We’d also like to have permission to quote you, and we promise not to argue with you, in print or otherwise.

BOOK SALES

We offer for sale all books listed at http://www.vardaman.com/booksale.php.

NEW SYSTEM FOR BUYING OR SELLING LAND OR TIMBER

For the details, click on http://www.vardaman.com and then on the red horizontal bar “Buy/Sell Land/Timber.” You can offer to buy or sell timber or land. You must post the general area of your interest; be sure to include the state. You must also post your E-MAIL ADDRESS and the URL of your Internet site. Our tracking report will not report the number of visitors UNLESS you enter your URL. If you are selling, you should post the name of the tract. When you have entered all details, click on “Submit,” and what you just entered will appear on our Internet site at the bottom of the page under the red horizontal bar “Buy/Sell Land/Timber.” Be sure to check for and correct errors.

For each tract posted after 05/12/05 and whose owner posted his URL, we charge $0.25 for each visit his ad receives. On each Friday at 0900 Central Time, we will e-mail him a bill for $0.25 for each visit his ad received during the week just ended. You can pay us by e-mailing the money to “Vardaman Virtual Forestry Company” at PayPal or mailing it to P.O. Box 12293, Jackson, MS 39236. We will delete your ad when your payments cease. The new fee schedule does not apply to tracts marked with asterisks::

SELL LAND OR TIMBER

For 107-A. tract in GA, click on http://www.Buythisfsbo.com/pineplantation/

BUY LAND

BUY TIMBER

*For tracts in AR, send e-mail to dyork@digitalpassage.com
*For tracts in IL, send e-mail to psftimber@hotmail.com