Biology

"Leadership has to do with direction. Management has to do with the speed, coordination and logistics in going in that direction. The Workers are chopping their way through the jungle. The Managers are coordinating, making sure the tools are sharp, etc. The Leaders climb a tree and shout Wrong jungle!! The Managers shout back Be quiet! We're making progress!"

"It may be that to eat and be eaten are the same thing in the end. My wisdom tells me that this is probably so. We are all made of the same stuff, remember, we of the Jungle, you of the City. The same substance composes us — the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star — we are all one, all moving to the same end. Remember that when you no longer remember me, my child."

"I was never a great reader, but there were two stories I loved best: Kipling's 'The Elephant's Child' and 'The Jungle Book.' Deep down, I've always wanted to write a book about a wild child and an elephant."

"Welcome to the jungle. It gets worse here everyday. Ya learn ta live like an animal In the jungle where we play. If you got a hunger for what you see You'll take it eventually You can have anything you want But you better not take it from me."

"And remember, when we talk of the fittest, it is all about the context. Sure, the lion is king of the jungle but airdrop him into Antarctica, & he's just a penguin's bitch."

"Of all the peoples whom I have studied, from city dwellers to cliff dwellers, I always find that at least 50 percent would prefer to have at least one jungle between themselves and their mothers-in-law."

"Never fight fair with a stranger, boy. You'll never get out of the jungle that way."

"In front of me, I see the jungle burning; behind me, I see green plants sprouting. We shall merge into the One from whom we came."

"He thought of the jungle, already regrowing around him to cover the scars they had created. He thought of the tiger, killing to eat. Was that evil? And ants? They killed. No, the jungle wasn't evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world."

"Now these are the Laws of the jungle, and many and mighty are they; But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch and the hump is — Obey!"

"A brave heart and a courteous tongue. They shall carry thee far through the jungle, manling."

"Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack."

"When she walked...she stretched out long and thin like a little tiger, and held her head high to look over the w:Grass:grass as if she were treading the jungle."

"‘There is none like to me !' says the Cub in the pride of his earliest kill; But the jungle is large and the Cub he is small. Let him think and be still."

"When Pack meets with Pack in the Jungle, And neither will go from the trail, Lie down till the leaders have spoken, It may be fair words shall prevail."

"Nature here is violent, base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away. Of course there's a lot of misery, but it's the same misery that is all around us. The trees here are in misery and the birds are in misery. I don't think they sing. They just screech in pain."

"Man is head, chest and stomach. Each of these animals operates, more often than not, individually. I eat, I feel, I even, although rarely, think. This jungle crawls and teems, is hungry, roars, gets angry, devours itself, and its cacophonic concert does not even stop when you are asleep."

"Basically, I believe the world is a jungle, and if it's not a bit of a jungle in the home, a child cannot possibly be fit to enter the outside world."

"The ability to manage well doesn't make much difference if you're not even in the right jungle."

"After several thousand years, we have advanced to the point where we bolt our doors and windows and turn on our burglar alarms - while the jungle natives sleep in open-door huts."

"Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future."

"A man perfects himself by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and with the man himself first ceases to be a jungle, and foul unwholesome desert thereby. The man is now a man."

"Roaming through the jungle of "oohs" and "ahs," searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats."

"I am Tarzan, King of the Apes, mighty hunter, mighty fighter. In all the jungle there is none so great."

"Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use."

"Stay in touch with my insanity Really is the only way It's a jungle out there kiddies Have a very fruitful day."

"Tarzan of the Apes, young and savage beast of the jungle, wondered at the cruel brutality of his own kind. Sheeta, the leopard, alone of all the jungle folk, tortured his prey. The ethics of all the others meted a quick and merciful death to their victims. Tarzan had learned from his books but scattered fragments of the ways of human beings."

"Robert Anton Wilson is the unacknowledged elephant in our cultural living room: a direct and indirect influence on popular books, movies, TV shows, music, games, comics, and commentary. … Wilson is a primary source for the ironic style of conspiracism, a sensibility that treats alleged cabals not as intrigues to be exposed or lies to be debunked but as a bizarre mutant mythos to be mined for laughs, metaphors, and social insights."

"Of all creatures, only the Binder had bested the Lord of Hellwell. Then the gods had come to challenge his power. They had been puny in the early days, struggling to discipline their mutant powers with drugs, hypnosis, meditation, neurosurgery — forging them into Attributes — and across the ages, those powers had grown. Four of them had entered Hellwell, only four, and his legions had not been able to repel them."

"Genetic bases of defective chromosome content or structure In a biological sense, genetic defects leading to abortion may originate from two partners: The conceptus and the uterus. From the conceptus side, it is well established that chromosomal anomalies lead to implantation defects. However, they occur mostly stochastically; to be the genetic cause of a recurrent loss, a genetic defect leading to systematic chromosome anomalies has to be found, as nicely reviewed recently by Kurahashi and coworkers. Abnormal chromosome structure may originate from defects in the checkpoint mechanisms that constitute a quality control factory of the cell, which is able to detect meiosis anomalies and is called Spindle Assembly Checkpoint (SAC), constituted by pro teins such as Mad1, Mad2, Bub1, Bub3, BubR1, and Mps1. A very recent study addressed this question on the general issue of defective reproduction performance, by screening two candidate genes, aurora kinase B (AURKB) and synaptonemal complex protein 3 (SYCP3). In the AURKB gene, the authors identified low frequency (0.5%) non synonymous variants (c. 155C.T, c. 236T.C, and c. 880G.A) inducing the changes p.A52V, p.I79T, and p.A294T in the polypeptidic chain, respectively. 236T >C and 880G >A were associated with antecedents of pregnancy losses. This preliminary study is one of those that pave the way toward evaluating genes playing a role in the quality of the meiotic progression. Two other genes have been investigated to this respect in miscarriage, BUB1 and MAD2. The authors showed firstly that as generally assumed, half the embryos from spontaneous miscarriages have an abnormal karyotype. By western blotting, the authors quantified the two proteins and estimated that they were under expressed in pathological cases. The authors also isolated chorionic villi where they targeted BUB1 and MAD2 expression by short hairpin RNA (shRNA) and showed that this induces an abnormal karyotype at a ~ sixfold increased frequency, compared to controls (indicating that mitotic defects can also be induced when these genes are dysfunctional). The role of MAD2 in such defects was independently confirmed by another study on trisomic abortuses. Clearly, therefore, anomalies in spindle assembly can lead to aneuploidies, and infertilities in the most severe cases, such as in the case of the recently identified mutation of the cohesin STAG3, leading to premature ovarian failure, but less severe mutations in the SAC genes could lead to variants that have more subtle effects. There is clearly space for studying this aspect of spindle stability on a wider basis than what has been performed up to now in the context of recurrent miscarriage."

"There was a world of mutants, men and women who were more than normal men and women, persons who had certain human talents and certain human understandings which the normal men and women of the world had never known, or having known, could not utilize in their entirety, unable to use intelligently all the mighty powers which lay dormant in their brains."

"The people finally know. They've been told about the mutants. And they hated the mutants. Of course, they hated them. They hated them because the existence of the mutants makes them second-class humans, because they are Neanderthalers suddenly invaded by a bow and arrow people."

"We hypothesize that the increased risk of spontaneous abortion with male age is a consequence of an increasing frequency of chromosomal anomalies in the spermatozoa with male age, which in turn increases the risk of spontaneous abortion. The influence of male age on the proportion of spermatozoa carrying a chromosomal anomaly or with damaged DNA has been documented in several groups of men. It may well result, in part, from the continuous replication of stem cell chromosomes from puberty onward; indeed, male stem cells have undergone about 150 chromosomal replications at the age of 20 years and about 600 by the age of 40 years. The chromosomal anomalies found in spontaneous abortions include autosomal trisomies, present in about 50 percent of abortuses with chromosomal anomalies, monosomy X (present in about 20 percent), and triploidy (16 percent). The remaining 12 percent correspond mainly to tetraploidy and structural anomalies of the chromosomes. The two most frequent anomalies sometimes have a paternal origin: Autosomal trisomies stem from nondisjunction during spermatogenesis in 10–20 percent or more of cases and, in monosomy X, the missing chromosome is most often the paternal one. Moreover, sperm chromosome aneuploidy may play a role in the etiology of recurrent pregnancy loss."

"The prevalence of chromosome abnormalities in women facing a single sporadic miscarriage is to be 45%. Approximately 50% to 60% of early spontaneous miscarriages are associated with a chromosomal anomaly of conceptus. Most common abnormality is aneuploidy, with autosomal trisomy accounting for more than 50% of chromosomally abnormal abortuses. A strong family history of recurrent miscarriage or genetic anomaly suggests a parental karyotypic abnormality, and a chromosomal analysis of the affected partner is appropriate in the primary evaluation. Chromosomal analysis of the miscarriage offers an explanation in at least 50% of cases. Parental karyotyping is not predictive of a subsequent miscarriage. Routine karyotyping of couples with recurrent miscarriage is not recommended. Cytogenetic analysis may be performed on products of conception to avoid unnecessary evaluation and treatment and because an aneuploid conceptus indicates a somewhat greater likelihood of success with a subsequent pregnancy (Evidence Level III)."

"I'm telling you, with everything we know, about science, about the makeup of the human body, what happened in that classroom is impossible. That kid attracted an arc of electricity from thirty feet away, and not just from the Jacob's Ladder, I mean, after a second it was like it was coming out of the whole… building."

"Anything can happen. How absolutely true. You're exactly the mutant I'm looking for! You're hired."

"We applaud the burgeoning emphasis on change in regulatory genes as the stuff of morphological evolution... if only because one of us had written a book to argue that the classical, and widely ignored data on evolution by heterochrony should be exhumed and valued as a primary demonstration of regulatory change. We do not see how point mutations in structural genes can lead, even by gradual accumulations, to new morphological designs. Regulatory changes in the timing of complex ontogenetic programs seem far more promising—and potentially rapid, in conformity with our punctuational predilections. The near identity of humans and chimps for structural genes, and the evidence of major regulatory change indicated by human neoteny provides an important confirmation."

"We're stumbling around in a very dark age basically trying not to kill each other. So it hurts me when you say "So what?" Because you are not just different, Jeremy, I think you have a mind that we won't evolve to for like thousands of years — you're maybe the man of the future right here and now."

"Numerous authors have looked at the role of chromosomal abnormalities in these embryonic losses. One study looked at 144 spontaneous miscarriages by obtaining direct preperations of chorionic villi. Seventy per cent had abnormal chromosomes of which 64% were autosomal trisomies, 9% polyploidy, 7% monosomy X ad 6% structural rearrangements. Errors of gonadogenesis during meiosis will result in autosomal trisomies. Errors of fertilization can result in triploidy from dispermy. Errors of the first division of the zygote result result in tetraploidy or mosaicism. None of these would be expected to be a repetitive event except in the very rare instances of balances translocations or inversions in one parent"

"The most common cause of miscarriage is chromosomal/genetic abnormalities, leading to ~50% of spontaneous miscarriages. Genetic abnormalities most frequently occur due to aneuploidy—when the chromosomes fail to separate properly during cell division—meaning that some cells have extra copies of a particular chromosome while others have none. The exact causes of aneuploidy are not well understood, although increased maternal age (>35 yrs) is the greatest risk factor."

"The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants."

"For randomized controlled trials of treatments, it is essential to have a clear classification of pregnancy loss type for both fetal and very early loss events. In addition, there is a strong argument for mandatory karyotyping of all pregnancy losses to exclude a lethal trisomy karyotype or triploidy. This is because, irrespective of treatment intervention, pregnancy loss has occurred and may have been described as a ‘false’ treatment failure. Recent papers testify to the high rate of abnormal chromosome type when pregnancy loss has occurred (Bricker and Farquharson, 2002; Levine et al., 2002; Stephenson et al., 2002; Philip et al., 2003; Morikawa et al., 2004)."

"6.2 Genetic factors The finding of an abnormal parental karyotype should prompt referral to a clinical geneticist. Genetic counselling offers the couple a prognosis for the risk of future pregnancies with an unbalanced chromosome complement and the opportunity for familial chromosome studies. Reproductive options in couples with chromosomal rearrangements include proceeding to a further natural pregnancy with or without a prenatal diagnosis test, gamete donation and adoption. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis has been proposed as a treatment option for translocation carriers. Since preimplantation genetic diagnosis necessitates that the couple undergo in vitro fertilisation to produce embryos, couples with proven fertility need to be aware of the financial cost as well as implantation and live birth rates per cycle following in vitro fertilisation/preimplantation genetic diagnosis. Furthermore, they should be informed that they have a higher (50–70%) chance of a healthy live birth in future untreated pregnancies following natural conception than is currently achieved after preimplantation genetic diagnosis/in vitro fertilisation (approximately 30%). Preimplantation genetic screening with in vitro fertilisation treatment in women with unexplained recurrent miscarriage does not improve live birth rates. Preimplantation genetic screening in conjunction with in vitro fertilisation has been advocated as a treatment option for women with recurrent miscarriage, the rationale being that the identification and transfer of what are thought to be genetically normal embryos will lead to a live birth. The live birth rate of women with unexplained recurrent miscarriage who conceive naturally is significantly higher than currently achieved after preimplantation genetic screening/in vitro fertilisation (20–30%)."

"Mutants. Since the discovery of their existence they have been regarded with fear, suspicion, often hatred. Across the planet, debate rages. Are mutants the next link in the evolutionary chain or simply a new species of humanity fighting for their share of the world? Either way it is a historical fact: Sharing the world has never been humanity's defining attribute."

"According to Goldschmidt, all that evolution by the usual mutations—dubbed "micromutations"—can accomplish is to bring about "diversification strictly within species, usually, if not exclusively, for the sake of adaptation of the species to specific conditions within the area which it is able to occupy." New species, genera, and higher groups arise at once, by cataclysmic saltations—termed macromutations or systematic mutations—which bring about in one step a basic reconstruction of the whole organism. The role of natural selection in this process becomes "reduced to the simple alternative: immediate acceptance or rejection." A new form of life having been thus catapulted into being, the details of its structures and functions are subsequently adjusted by micromutation and selection. It is unnecessary to stress here that this theory virtually rejects evolution as this term is usually understood (to evolve means to unfold or to develop gradually), and that the systematic mutations it postulates have never been observed. It is possible to imagine a mutation so drastic that its product becomes a monster hurling itself beyond the confines of species, genus, family, or class. But in what Goldschmidt has called the "hopeful monster" the harmonious system, which any organism must necessarily possess, must be transformed at once into a radically different, but still sufficiently coherent, system to enable the monster to survive. The assumption that such a prodigy may, however rarely, walk the earth overtaxes one's credulity, even though it may be right that the existence of life in the cosmos is in itself an extremely improbable event."

"Mutation: it is the key to our evolution. It is how we have evolved from a single-celled organism into the dominant species on the planet. This process is slow, and normally taking thousands and thousands of years. But every few hundred millennia, evolution leaps forward."

"We were always afraid a mutant with superior intellectual powers would come along," Baines said reflectively. "A deeve who would be to us what we are to the great apes. Something with a bulging cranium, telepathic ability, a perfect semantic system, ultimate powers of symbolization and calculation. A development along our own path. A better human being." "He acts by reflex," Anita said wonderingly. She had the analysis and was sitting at one of the desks studying it intently. "Reflex — like a lion. A golden lion." She pushed the tape aside, a strange expression on her face. "The lion god." "Beast," Wisdom corrected tartly. "Blond beast, you mean." "He runs fast," Baines said, "and that's all. No tools. He doesn't build anything or utilize anything outside himself. He just stands and waits for the right opportunity and then he runs like hell." "This is worse than anything we've anticipated," Wisdom said. His beefy face was lead-gray. He sagged like an old man, his blunt hands trembling and uncertain. "To be replaced by an animal! Something that runs and hides. Something without a language!" He spat savagely. "That's why they weren't able to communicate with it. We wondered what kind of semantic system it had. It hasn't got any! No more ability to talk and think than a — dog."

"Aside from inheriting half of the genome of each of our parents, we are born with a small number of novel mutations that occurred during gametogenesis and postzygotically. Recent genome and exome sequencing studies of parent–offspring trios have provided the first insights into the number and distribution of these de novo mutations in health and disease, pointing to risk factors that increase their number in the offspring. De novo mutations have been shown to be a major cause of severe early-onset genetic disorders such as intellectual disability, autism spectrum disorder, and other developmental diseases. In fact, the occurrence of novel mutations in each generation explains why these reproductively lethal disorders continue to occur in our population. Recent studies have also shown that de novo mutations are predominantly of paternal origin and that their number increases with advanced paternal age."

"Here I am saying that mutants are dangerous to us ordinaries, a view which John W. Campbell, Jr. deplored. We were supposed to view them as our leaders. But I always felt uneasy as to how they would view us. I mean, maybe they wouldn't want to lead us. Maybe from their superevolved lofty level we wouldn't seem worth leading. Anyhow, even if they agreed to lead us, I felt uneasy as where we would wind up going. It might have something to do with buildings marked SHOWERS but which really weren't."

"Unique events are unrepeatable and cannot be subjected to any sort of experimental investigation. … His general theory, that all life on earth had originated and evolved by a gradual successive accumulation of fortuitous mutations, is still, as it was in Darwin’s time, a highly speculative hypothesis entirely without direct factual support and very far from that self-evident axiom some of its more aggressive advocates would have us believe."