Re: [Biofuel] Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid
I doubt that this ruling applies to Big Ag. The genes Big Ag are using are not found in nature but are manufactured using recombinant DNA technology. The Myriad Genetics case is gene identification. Ken - Original Message From: Guag Meister [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org; sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Tue, April 6, 2010 4:46:12 AM Subject: [Biofuel] Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid Hi All ; Keith we discussed this before on-list. This is great news!! There will be a lot of pressure from Big Ag to overturn this. And where is the mainstream press on this story? This needs everyone's support. Invalidating gene patents would be a huge positive in ensuring crop diversity and food supply. BR Peter G. target=_blank href=http://www.gac-seeds.com;www.gac-seeds.com http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100329/1506458769.shtml Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid In a huge ruling, U.S. District Judge Robert Sweet has said that gene patents are invalid. As you may recall, last May, the ACLU was the first to finally challenge whether or not genes could be patented. There was a lot of back and forth over the case, with many saying that a ruling against gene patents would throw a wrench into the business plans of many companies, because so many biotech/medical companies have been relying on the idea that gene patents must be valid for so long. But just because many companies relied on a mistaken understanding of patent law, doesn't mean that it should be allowed to continue. The judge made the point clear when it came to gene patents, saying that they: are directed to a law of nature and were therefore improperly granted. The case was brought against Myriad Genetics, who will surely appeal, so this is nowhere close to over. But it involved a test for breast cancer, that Myriad basically had a monopoly over -- and the claim was that this not only made it more difficult for women to get tested, but it also greatly discouraged other research in the field. In part, this was because the patents that Myriad held were incredibly broad. Patents, of course, are not supposed to be granted on things found in in nature -- and it's hard to argue against the idea that genes are found in nature. Supporters of gene patents often claim that they're not really gene patents, but a patent on identifying the gene, which is a nice semantic game that the judge clearly saw through. This is a huge step forward for encouraging more real research into genetic testing, rather than locking up important information. -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20100406/539652a5/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list href=mailto:Biofuel@sustainablelists.org;Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Acid-base chemistry
lol, yeah, moles for sure are kind of tricky. precisely because of the things you mention. (i dropped chem in college. there was no way i was going to pass if i stuck it out.) thanks for sharing your impression of the youtube guy. sorry if it was waste of your time. ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] socialism, taxes, economics, comments please.
I was browsing thru some of the old biofuel posts and saw this one and its thread. Sorry but I couldn't resist putting in my own jaded comments. The proper resolution of the problems is to do what Bolivia did. Get a loan from the IMF to build a pipeline to the village. The IMF will require that the well no longer be communal but should be sold to a big water company like Bechtel. Bechtel will raise the price of water so high that those people on the lower end of the economic strata will not be able to afford it. Under pressure from lobbyists or from outright bribery the village will pass a law making it illegal to collect rainwater. What's better socialism or capitalism? - Original Message From: Chip Mefford [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: biofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Mon, September 18, 2006 2:16:21 PM Subject: [Biofuel] socialism, taxes, economics, comments please. Spent a lot of hours behind the wheel these last few weeks. Driving from the 'services' economy of the greater mid-atlantic Washington DC USA region, through rural WV, and Pa, up through industrialized and agricultural southern Canada, down through agricultural and tourist economy of northern Michigan/UP... A model came to mind. A Very Simple Economic Model. - Albert, the blacksmith. Earns the equiv of $24,000 US a year plying his trade. Beverly, the mortgage banker. Earns the equiv of $240,000 US a year, plying her trade. Charles, the surgeon, Earns the equiv of $2.400,000 US a year plying his trade Emily, the CEO, Earns the equiv of $24,000,000 US a year plying her trade. In this community, folks work 8 hours a day to fulfill their trade obligations, no more, no less. In this community, folks work 5 days a week to fulfill their trade obligations, no more, no less. In this community, folks work 48 weeks a year to fulfill their trade obligations, no more, no less. In this community where Albert, Beverly, Charles and Emily live, it takes 1 hour to go the communal well, and draw the water needed for the day, and haul it back to their respective domiciles. --- Q1. What is an hours labour worth in this community? Q2. Should the community consider bringing in cheap labour to haul their water? Q3, Should the community levee a tax and use the tax to pay the cheap labour to haul the water? Q3.1 If so, at what rate should Albert, Beverly, Charles and Emily be taxed? Discussion. What is this hour devoted to drawing water worth? Since there are 24 hours in the day, and all the hours are spoken for, doing the regular stuff, like raising kids, cleaning house, working, fiddling about, and occasionally watching NFL or world cup rallye, the only reason to do offload the hauling of water duty would be to gain an extra hour of free time. So, to Albert, an hour of free time is essentially worth $1000 over a year. To Beverly, $10,000, to Charles $100,000 and to Emily $1,000,000. Discussion How does the Nash Equilibrium bear on this scenario? - Somewhere, I'm sure this Very Simple Model is already addressed. If someone could point me to a paper, I'd greatly appreciate it. Comments please. thanks. ___ Biofuel mailing list href=mailto:Biofuel@sustainablelists.org;Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/biofuel_sustainablelists.org Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (50,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Not exactly biodiesel they way we usually think of it, but still interesting
Binding biomass (lignin) with conventional diesel to reduce soot. http://w3.tue.nl/en/news/news_article/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=9245tx_ttnews[backPid]=361cHash=519bda9553 Darryl -- Darryl McMahon The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy (in trade paperback and eBook) http://www.econogics.com/TENHE/ Journey to Forever reviews The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html#tenhe ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Financing World Hunger
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/financingWorldHunger.php ISIS Report 21/04/10 Financing World Hunger How the financial markets create hunger and make huge profits Dr. Mae-Wan Ho and Prof. Peter Saunders World food crisis rerun? Food prices have been rising since 2003. By mid-2008, the food commodity price index peaked at 230 percent of its 2002 value, with most of the increase due to the grain prices. Corn and wheat both reached 350 percent and rice 530 percent respectively of their 2002 values [1]. The United Nations declared 2008 the year of the global food crisis even before prices peaked [2], and an estimated 150 million were added to the world's hungry that year [3]. Although food prices have fallen from their peak, they remained well above 2002 levels;. By the end of 2009, more than a billion people are critically hungry, with 24 000 dying of hunger each day, over half of them children [3, 4]. The UN Food Programme faces a budget shortfall of US$4.1 billion. The UN's special rapporteur on the right to food Olivier de Schutter blames [5] inaction to halt speculation on agricultural commodities and continued biofuels policies, and warns of a rerun of the 2008 food price crisis in 2010 or 2011. What happened in 2007-8 was a price crisis, not a food crisis, he says, precipitated by speculation in the financial market that was not linked to insufficient food being produced. It would be a mistake to dismiss other threats to food production, notably the inherently unsustainable green revolution agricultural model that is highly dependent on rapidly depleting resources such as fossil fuels and water, and monoculture crops especially vulnerable to physical and biological stresses associated with climate change (see [6] 'Land Rush' as Threats to Food Security Intensify http://www.i-sis.org.uk/landRush.php). Nonetheless, the disproportionate influence of the unregulated financial market on the real economy of goods and services (see [7] Financing Poverty, SiS 40 http://www.i-sis.org.uk/FinancingPoverty.php) is most devastating for people's access to food, a basic necessity. The global commodity food trade and its deregulation Food is produced by farmers everywhere in the world; but it is mostly bought and sold as commodities by 'middlemen', now mostly big corporations that trade globally, not just in a commodities market, but also in an elaborate financial derivatives market that pushes food prices up and creates price volatility. Commodities are the raw materials while 'commodities derivatives' are financial contracts derived from the value of the underlying commodity [8]. At the bottom of the commodities derivatives is the 'futures' contract, which brings together buyers and sellers in a regulated auction market like the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) in the United States, to bid and settle a price for the delivery of a quantity of a commodity, say corn, at an agreed time (usually 90 days) and place. This futures contract enables commodity sellers, such as grain elevator operators, to avoid sudden price drops and commodity users or traders to avoid sudden price increases; and is generally regarded as a kind of insurance. But it ceased to work as such after the deregulation of the global agricultural markets. The deregulation of global agricultural markets was part of the economic deregulation driven by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It was a process initiated by the Breton Woods Agreements of 1944 to standardize international trade and marketing policies to facilitate global trade [9]. It eliminated government intervention in agricultural markets, dismantling global commodity agreements, price supports, and other mechanisms that had helped stabilize global supplies and prices. The WTO's Agreement on Agriculture, and other multi-lateral and bilateral free-trade agreements including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), opened up markets in the developing world to an increasingly powerful global agribusiness industry. The consequence of deregulation was [10] to replace local market access for the majority of small farmers with global market access for a few global transnational companies. Thanks to non-existent anti-trust enforcement and rampant vertical integration, [t]hree companies - Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and Bung - control the vast majority of global grain trading, while Monsanto controls more than one-fifth of the global market in seeds. Farmers may have benefited from a windfall in higher prices paid for their produce in the short term, but they have had to pay more for inputs like fertilizers and diesel for tractors. Only big agribusiness corporations could profit from the long term rise in the market [10, 11]. Cargill's 2007 third-quarter profits increased 86 percent, General Mills' were up 60 percent, and Monsanto's 45 percent. Bunge saw profits of
Re: [Biofuel] Judge: Gene Patents Are Invalid
not exactly, ken. at least, as i understand it, GMOs do not contain manufactured genes. they are merely transplanting already existing genetic material into organisms which heretofore did not contain said genes in their genome (and thus the attributes of the transplanted genes could not be obtained by traditional methods such as selective breeding). still, it is different, as you point out. enough so that the big ag lawyers (and the judges who side with them) have plenty of room for legal parsing. On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Ken Riznyk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I doubt that this ruling applies to Big Ag. The genes Big Ag are using are not found in nature but are manufactured using recombinant DNA technology. The Myriad Genetics case is gene identification. Ken -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20100421/3e50e746/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Not exactly biodiesel they way we usually think of it, but still interesting
cool stuff. On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Darryl McMahon [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Binding biomass (lignin) with conventional diesel to reduce soot. http://w3.tue.nl/en/news/news_article/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=9245tx_ttnews[backPid]=361cHash=519bda9553 Darryl -- Darryl McMahon The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy (in trade paperback and eBook) http://www.econogics.com/TENHE/ Journey to Forever reviews The Emperor's New Hydrogen Economy http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html#tenhe ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/ -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20100421/160cd944/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
