Progress Daily

Eric Lander, calculates that the cost of DNA sequencing has fallen to a hundred-thousandth of what it was a decade ago. The genome sequenced by the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium took 13 years and cost $3 billion. Now, using sequencers from Illumina, a human genome can be read in eight days at a cost of about $10,000. Pacific Biosciences has a technology that can read genomes from single DNA molecules, and thinks that in three years’ time this will be able to map a human genome in 15 minutes for less than $1,000.

“Biology 2.0,” by Geoffrey Carr

The cost of sequencing DNA has fallen from about $1 per base pair in the mid-1990s to a tenth of a cent today. Rob Carlson started tracking the price of DNA synthesis a decade ago. He found a steady decline, from over $10 per base pair to, lately, well under $1. This decline recalls Moore’s law, which, when promulgated in 1965, predicted the exponential rise of computing power.

In most species, improved circumstances increase reproductive effort, yet as economic development gets going, country after country has experienced the “demographic transition,” in which fertility (the number of children borne by a woman over her lifetime) drops from around 8 to one-and-a-half.

Unless trends change, by the middle of the century, populations in the most developed countries will have shrunk and the number of retired individuals supported by each person of working age will increase significantly.

A study by Mikko Myrskyla, Hans-Peter Kohler, & Francesco Billari (”Advances in development reverse fertility declines“) suggests that the trend may change: as development continues, the demographic transition goes into reverse.

The researchers looked at two years 1975 and 2005, and analyzed countries using two factors, total fertility rate (the number of children that would be born to a woman in a particular country over the course of her life if she experienced the age-specific fertility rates observed in that country during the calendar year in question) and human development index or “HDI” (a measure used by the UN that includes life expectancy, average income per person, and level of education), which has a maximum possible value of one.

In 1975, of the 107 countries analyzed, the best was Canada, with an HDI of 0.89. By 2005, two dozen countries (of 240 analzyed) had HDIs above nine. In 1975, a graph plotting fertility rate against the HDI fell as the HDI rose. By 2005, though, once the HDI rose above 0.9 or so, it turned up, producing a “J-shaped” curve (the mirror image of a letter J).

In many countries with very high levels of development (around 0.95) fertility rates are now approaching two children per woman.

The nadir of fertility appears to be 1.3 children per woman but this new data suggests the ultimate outcome of development may be zero population growth.

“The best of all possible worlds?,” The Economist

According to data compiled the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, total private-sector employment rose by nearly 20 million between 1993 and 2002. A breathtaking total of 330 million jobs were added, while 310 million jobs were lost.

Between 1983 and 2002, the number of managerial and specialized professional jobs rose from 24 million to 43 million — from 23% of total employment to 31%.

Between 1980 and 2003, American manufacturing output climbed a dizzying 93 percent. Yes, production fell during the recent recession, but it is now recovering: the industrial production index for manufacturing rose 2.2 percent in 2003.

Manufacturing’s share of gross domestic product declined from 27% in 1960 to 14% in 2002, during which time the percentage of workers employed in manufacturing fell from 28% to 12%. The primary cause of these trends is the superior productivity of American manufacturers. Output per hour in the overall nonfarm business sector rose 50% between 1980 and 2002; by contrast, manufacturing output per hour shot up 100%. In other words, goods are getting cheaper and cheaper relative to services. Since this faster productivity growth has not been matched by a corresponding increase in demand for manufactured goods, the result is that Americans are spending relatively less on manufactures.

Similarly, in 1870, 48% of total US employment was in farming. By 2002 the figure had fallen to 2%.

“10 Truths About Trade,” by Brink Lindsey

According to Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo (of the Poverty Action Laboratory), among the rural poor, fewer than half have children aged 13-18 in education, whereas among those living in cities and earning over $2 a day the figure is over three-quarters.

In emerging markets, among the very poorest (those living on less than $1 a day), the number of children in the household ranged from 1.8 to 3.6 per adult woman. In families that live on $6-10 per person, the average number of children per household was between 1 and 1.3 (these figures do not include China so they are not influenced by that country’s one-child policy).

“Notions of shopkeepers,” The Economist

The Internet gives access to a huge market at very low marginal cost. This creates the possibility of success at very low participation rates.

Wikipedia works despite the fact that only about 0.01% of readers regularly contribute material. With 680 million annual visitors, that’s still 75,000 active contributors — who have created 10 million articles.

YouTube works with just 0.1% of users uploading their own videos.

And spammers can make a fortune with response rates of 0.00001%.

“The miraculous power of scale,” by Chris Anderson

According to The World Economy by Angus Maddison, Gross Word Product (GWP) grew by about 0.1% a year between 1000 and 1500; 0.3% a year between 1500 and 1820; 1% a year between 1820 and 1870; 2% a year between 1870 and 1950; 5% a year between 1950 and 1973; and 3% a year between 1973 and 1998.

“Can Gross World Product Shrink?,” by Felix Salmon

UCLA scientists have found that for computer-savvy middle-aged and older adults, searching the Internet may help stimulate and possibly improve brain function.

Dr. Gary Small (director of UCLA’s Memory and Aging Research Center), — with Teena D. Moody and Susan Y. Bookheimer — worked with 24 volunteers between the ages of 55 and 76. Half of the study participants had experience searching the Internet, while the other half had no experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar between the two groups.

Study participants performed Web searches and book-reading tasks while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans.

All study participants showed significant brain activity during the book-reading task, demonstrating use of the regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities, which are located in the temporal, parietal, occipital and other areas of the brain.

All participants demonstrated the same brain activity during Internet searching that was seen during the book-reading task. During Internet searching, the Web-savvy group also registered activity in the frontal, temporal and cingulate areas of the brain (which control decision-making and complex reasoning).

During Internet searching, the brains of those with prior experience sparked 22,000 voxels, compared with only 7,000 voxels for those with less experience.

The minimal brain activation found in the less experienced Internet group may be due to participants not quite grasping the strategies needed to successfully engage in an Internet search.

“UCLA study finds that searching the Internet increases brain function,” by Rachel Champeau

Complete Genomics says it will start charging only $5,000 next year for determining the sequence of the genetic code that makes up the DNA in one set of human chromosomes. This would represent another step toward of the “$1,000 genome,” the price at which it might become commonplace for people to obtain their entire DNA sequences, giving them information on what diseases they might be predisposed to or what drugs would work best for them.

The cost of DNA sequencing has dropped by a factor of 10 every year for the last four years, a faster rate of decline than even for computers, says George M. Church.

The first human genome sequence, completed by the federally financed Human Genome Project in 2003, is estimated to have cost a few hundred million dollars. In 2007, the genome sequence of James D. Watson was completed at a cost of about $1 million.

Today, the cost is about $100,000, according to Chad Nusbaum, of the Broad Institute.

Applied Biosystems recently announced that it expected its newest machine would allow a human genome to be sequenced for $10,000.

Right now, scientists studying diseases look at only particular locations in the DNA because it is too expensive to determine the entire DNA sequence. An entire sequence would probably provide more complete information.

“Dawn of Low-Price Mapping Could Broaden DNA Uses,” by Andrew Pollack