Dean arthur schwartzmiller biography of michael
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1 Introduction
1.1 Multiple meanings for “synthetic biology”
Many languages have words and phrases, called contranyms, that have two nearly opposite meanings. For example, a “citation” from Harvard University is good, but a “citation” from the Harvard University police is bad. If you run “fast”, you are moving at great speed; if you hold “fast”, you are not moving at all.
“Synthetic biology” is a contranym. In a version popular today in some engineering communities, it seeks to use natural parts of biological systems (such as DNA fragments and protein “biobricks”) to create assemblies that do things that are not done by natural biology (such as digital computation or manufacture of a speciality chemical). Here, engineers hope that the performance of molecular parts drawn from living systems can be standardized, allowing them to be mixed and matched to give predictable outcomes, just as transistors are standardized allowing engineers to mix and match them to give integrated circuits with predictable performance. For this, the whole must be the sum of its parts.
Among chemists, “synthetic biology” means the opposite. Chemist's “synthetic biology” seeks to use unnatural molecular parts to do things that are done by natural biology. Chemists believe that if they can reproduce
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Trials to start in case of child-molesting doctor
He ranks among the most prolific pedophiles in American history, a doctor who abused hundreds if not thousands of children from the 1960s through the 1980s under the guise of a bogus growth study.
The victims of the late Dr. George Reardon started coming forward in droves in 2007, after the owner of Reardon's former West Hartford home cracked open a wall during a renovation project and found a hidden stash of pornographic video reels and more than 50,000 35 mm slides.
Now, some are preparing to tell their stories as the first cases related to the abuse go to trial. Jury selection began last week in one of dozens of cases against Reardon's hospital — the start of the Hartford area's first public reckoning of the horrors that damaged the lives of countless boys and girls a generation ago.
"I was using drugs by the time I was 12 years old. I was drinking by the time I was 12 years old. I was pretty much a mess," one plaintiff told The Associated Press. He said he was abused more than 20 times by Reardon and, like the vast majority of alleged victims, has asked to remain anonymous.
Reardon, an endocrinologist, died in 1998 without ever facing criminal charges.
The lawsuits of the now-middle-aged victims argue that the institu