rapchee

I got a surprise today!
Thanking all the awesome people who were in the video. Totally wasn't expecting this haha. Thanks also to you guys who watch for being so much fun this past decade! Gah. 10 years!
Big hugs to Kristen and Rowan for organising this. You're both such great people. I often forget Kristen works at Youtube because she's become such a great friend and she shines nothing but generosity and kindness.
Rowan is... he's ok. Just kidding

The people in this (in order) :

- Greta, Adele, and Sarah (skitbox) https://www.youtube.com/user/skitboxtv They're hilarious, talented, lovely people and you'll definitely see more of them and their amazing sketch group, Skitbox.

- James Grime (singingbanana) https://www.youtube.com/user/singingbanana James is a mathematician/magician/Enigma expert/fantastic tour guide/great guy. James taught me that the movie The Imitation Game was not historically sound and made me realise I should stop pretending to know everything about the enigma machine after watching a 2 hour movie about it. James though, he knows!

- Anna Akana https://www.youtube.com/user/AnnaAkana Anna is what I think I'd be if I were better haha. Anna is a comedian, actress, writer, director, fellow cat lady, business extraordinaire. We both got parking fines for each other. That's what I tell myself.

- Louna Maroun https://www.youtube.com/user/Loopylady11 A singer/songwriter, comedian, vlogger, and all round nice person, Louna's lounaverse is always such a pleasant stop!

-Phil https://www.youtube.com/user/WongFuProductions Phil... phil, phil, phil, phil, philllllllll. Phil and his team at Wongfu make amazing sketches, shorts, films, and now a show with Youtube Red. Phil.... phil, phil, phil, phil

- Derek https://www.youtube.com/user/1veritasium Derek makes incredible Science videos - you watch one, you'll watch them all. He's also one of my close friends who I miss terribly (move back home) and if you see fancy teacups in my videos, they're ones he got me. This description really plays down how great his videos are.

- The Fine Bros (and their team!) https://www.youtube.com/user/TheFineBros my secret husbands! The Fine Brothers are ... sigh, all sorts of lovely. They're pioneers in what they do and such an iconic part of Youtube for me. They're also incredibly supportive people in the community.

- Wes https://www.youtube.com/user/WongFuProductions Wes works with Phil and is one of the many talented parts of Wongfu. Wes also has his own clothing line! He also has a whole shelf dedicated to a figurine in this video.

- Blair and Marty https://www.youtube.com/user/mightycarmods These legends. One day, a zombie apocalypse will come and they're the ones who taught us how to build a car for it. Two of the coolest guys out there who make really fun videos about cars are also talented musicians and good eggs.

- Hugh was one of the first Aussie youtubers I met and has been a great friend since. Hugh's a talented archaeologist, teacher, and very funny guy.

- Theo https://www.youtube.com/user/superwog1 Theo and his brother make videos that make me laugh before I even load them. After years (and years) of following them we got to finally meet this year and they're as nice as you could imagine.

- Joey https://www.youtube.com/user/JoeyGraceffa I don't really know who Joey is? Juuuust kidding. Joey is two thumbs up. I was lucky enough to finally meet Joey a few years ago and he was kind enough to invite me to 4th of July at his house and I got to see he was even nicer in person than he was in his videos. He's great.

- Jodie https://www.youtube.com/c/jodiefox Jodie is one of those people you meet and who immediately motivate you to be better, work harder, and do more. We met through work but have become friends (hopefully) and she has a cat that's *whispers* cuter than mine. She's also a cofounder of a shoe company that you should check out! They do vegan shoes too!

- Ami Yamato https://www.youtube.com/user/yamatoami Talk about mesmerising. The first time I watched Ami's videos I felt like I had travelled to another part of the internet. On our last trip to London, Rowan and I got to meet Ami and it was just as magical as her videos are. Ami is one of my favourite channels.

- Grace https://www.youtube.com/user/graciehinabox girlcrush, adorkable Grace is unstoppable and every time you look up, she'll be achieving something new. Her videos, books, show, and movies are only indicators of how delightful and talented Grace is.

- Wengie https://www.youtube.com/user/WWWengie Is it weird to say I've spent hours looking at pictures of Wengie? Yes? Too bad. Wengie is blowing up right now and all because of how hard she works to make fun and charming tutorials to share.

Britain is leaving the European Union... or maybe not? Let's place some odds on what might or might not happen with Brexit.

Discuss this video: https://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGrey/comments/4sygwf/brexit_briefly/

Sponsor: http://squarespace.com/grey

Music by: http://www.davidreesmusic.com

Csak Norm MacDonald és egy vicc.

Hello, operator? I’d like to report a FREAKIN FIVE-ALARM FIRE!

Read more...

Pick a Warhammer 40K best friend is a post from meh.ro

"Swing Lite" from an upcoming album of mine. You can get an immediate download of it (and hundreds of other tracks) if you become a patron. http://patreon.com/andrewhuang Thanks to everyone supporting on there!

Subscribe: http://youtube.com/andrewhuang

Also in this video:
Gunnarolla http://youtube.com/gunnarolla
Rob Scallon http://youtube.com/robscallon

Let's be friends forever:
Twitter http://twitter.com/andrewismusic
Facebook http://facebook.com/andrewismusic
Tumblr http://andrewismusic.tumblr.com
Instagram http://instagram.com/andrewismusic
SoundCloud http://soundcloud.com/andrewismusic

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If you're new here, my name is Andrew Huang and I'm a musician who works with many genres and many instruments - and I've also made music with many things that aren't instruments like balloons, pants, water, and meth lab equipment. Find out more about me or get in touch at http://andrewismusic.com

You can also stream and download my 30+ albums and EPs at http://andrewhuang.bandcamp.com or check out my other videos at http://youtube.com/andrewhuang

Thanks for watching today and a big hug to you if you share this video with someone!

It's super easy. I don't get the problem.

fourwordsalluppercase

More awesome videos at RocketJump.com!

I've been wanting to write this headline for awhile. When SpaceX first began launching, steering, and landing rockets a few years ago, the dream of reusable rockets began to seem less dreamlike.... read more

The post Bullseye! Watch SpaceX Rocket Fall From Space and Land on a Dime appeared first on Singularity HUB.

Ez nem hivatalos Johnny Walker reklám, de bazz.

YouTube Space Tokyo 年末スペシャルライブ！！
動画は 8:17頃から視聴出来ます♪

catgifcentral:

Fox feud.

In 2014, a few days after Christmas, Dr. Valentino Gantz walked into his lab at the University of California, San Diego to check on some newly hatched fruit flies.

With a single look, he knew he had shattered the laws of evolution.

It was supposed to be an unremarkable quick in-and-out. Gantz and his advisor Dr. Ethan Bier were trying to develop a way to spread certain genes through a large population — a mutagenic chain reaction popularly known as a “gene drive.”

Gantz bred the larvae — thousands of them — from an albino mother. According to classical rules of inheritance, only one out of four young flies should carry the mutation.

Instead, one after another, Gantz saw nothing but pale, albino flies.

“We were stunned,” said Bier, “it was like the sun rose in the west rather than the east.”

Locked behind five security doors, sealed in a biosafety containers, was a tool that could forever end insect-borne diseases — and in the process, wipe out entire species, reengineer life and perhaps topple ecosystems.

The genius of gene drives

What the team painstakingly discovered was a new incarnation of an old idea: using CRISPR, the gene editing technique, to construct “selfish gene” mutations that insert themselves into the genome and transmit down generations with nearly 100% efficiency.

Genes normally go from parent to child like shuffling a deck of cards. Take a physical trait like red eyes in mosquitos. Mosquitos (and humans) carry two copies of almost every gene. Red eyes is a dominant trait in mosquitos, which means it only takes one copy of the red-eye gene for it to appear.

Now, say a mother mosquito has one red-eye and one black-eye gene variant at analogous positions on two separate DNA bundles. The bundle that carries the red-eye gene has a near 50/50 chance of getting passed on to her offspring. Fair and square.

Nature, however, evolved a way to cheat the system. A group of selfish genes encode an enzyme that homes in on one of the DNA bundles — the one that doesn’t carry the desired gene variant. There, it makes a cut. This triggers the cell’s DNA repair system, which uses the other DNA bundle — the one with the red-eye gene — as a template to repair the other bundle, effectively copying the red-eye gene. Now, unless it mutates, the red-eye gene has a near 100% chance of getting passed on to baby mosquitos.

The result? When released in sufficient quantity, a single inserted gene could spread through an entire population in roughly a dozen generations, or a single season.

In 2003, in a seminal paper Dr. Austin Burt laid out the possibility of building artificial gene drives to control the spread of blood-borne diseases like malaria. It’s an intriguing idea: spread a “suicide gene” to wipe out the entire species, or add in disease-resistant genes to entire populations.

A big hurdle? Gene drives were tough to make with traditional molecular genetics methods. That is, until CRISPR came along.

Malaria-resistant mosquitos

Easy, cheap and highly effective, CRISPR lets scientists make precise cuts almost anywhere along the genome and works in a large number of species. Linked to a gene drive, the cut also defines where artificial selfish genes get copied in. Once they’re in, they spread through natural procreation.

Working with Dr. Anthony James, Gantz added a gene that makes malaria antibodies in mama mosquitos whenever they drink. These antibodies tightly grab onto the parasite and stop it from developing any further, preventing its deadly effects.

Since the gene adds no benefit to the mosquitos, normally it would get diluted by the gene pool and eventually peter out. With gene drive, however, it gets passed through generations with 99% efficacy.

Although the researchers stopped short of confirming that the mosquitos were resistant to malaria, they did show that they expressed the antibody genes.

“It’s completely outstanding,” said Dr. Kevin Esvelt, a gene drive researcher at Harvard.

Burt agrees, but says long-term studies are needed to see how long the effects can last. Modeling studies show that it takes roughly 20 generations for the new gene to spread wide enough to make a difference.

So far we haven’t done cage experiments to assess long-term efficiency and mutation rates, but it’s one of our next steps, Gantz told Singularity Hub.

I think far more pressing are larger questions that need to be addressed before we can even contemplate field studies, Gantz said. Now that technology is no longer a limitation, should we — for the greater good — dictate the fate of entire species?

Driving forward

Earlier this year, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine hosted a workshop to begin tackling the thorny issue of playing god.

For one, the technology isn’t quite there yet. How specific is the gene manipulation? How long can it last? Can we make it somewhat reversible? What are the ecological effects of gene drives?

“We know so little,” said Dr. Zach Adelman, a molecular geneticist at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.

And it’s not just transmissible diseases. In theory, gene drives could give nearly extinct animals an edge up and save them from extinction.

Even when the science part gets figured out, should we tamper with Mother Nature? Essentially, we need to balance immediate humanitarian concerns with potential global ecological effects, said Burt. Since animals roam far and wide, unheeding of national boundaries, multiple countries will have to work together to develop regulatory guidelines and establish governing agencies.

“We have time to figure it out though,” said Burt.

In the meantime, gene drive researchers are taking extra precautions to avoid accidentally contaminating the environment with lab-grown mutants.

Our experiments were conducted in high-security labs, explained Gantz. We also worked with tropical mosquitos that can’t survive in the California climate. Even if they somehow got out, they wouldn’t be able to sustain their life cycle or find mates, he said.

Yet some experts are still concerned.

Dr. George Church, a pioneer in gene drives at Harvard, calls for failsafe mechanisms to stop the gene drive from propagating if anything went wrong. His proposal, though elegant, is not a simple fix. Long story short, it involves adding in another gene drive, a “reversal” one so to speak, to balance out the effects of the first drive.

So far, the mechanism was only shown to work in yeast.

We need some serious soul searching before we can move on to field applications, said Gantz. With this study, we did go for a slightly less risky route: compared to other gene drive approaches that wipe out entire species, ours — population modification — should in theory have a smaller impact on an ecosystem, explained Gantz.

The team — Gantz, James and Bier — believes it’ll take about a year to prepare mosquitoes for field tests. Although eager to test drive population modification, they are going slow and careful.

“It’s not going to go anywhere until the social science advances to the point where we can handle it,” said James. “We’re not about to do anything foolish.”

Image Credit: Shutterstock.com

The post Gene Drives Could Wipe Out Insect-Borne Disease — But What’s the Price? appeared first on Singularity HUB.

From Key & Peele Cleary History sketch.

Sweating is a post from meh.ro

Thanksgiving is coming up, you'll definitely want this recipe for your family dinner!

A young Benedict Cumberbatch.