Read a bit more at Gizmag.com, or read the entire article as published in Current Protocols in Microbiology.

The Earthquake in Copenhagen truly marked the end of one historical era, and the beginning of a new one. It is an era of more democratic global governance (at least in the sense of how power, actual and perceived, is dispersed among nations). An era of continuous struggle to understand what is happening to our planet, and continuous effort to share that understanding. An era of nations being forced to collaborate, more and more closely, and over several decades, on planetary management. In the hindsight of future history (especially environmental history), CoP-15 will likely loom large indeed as an inflection point, a time when everything changed — or rather, was finally seen by all as changed.

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Ugandan MPs have voted to outlaw female genital mutilation – also known as female circumcision.

Anyone convicted of the practice, which involves cutting off a girl’s clitoris, will face 10 years in jail, or a life sentence if a victim dies.

The BBC’s Joshua Mmali in Uganda says it is not officially condoned but is still practised in several rural areas.

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The law, which states that the use of animals in circuses “constitutes an act of cruelty”, took effect on 1 July with operators given a year to comply, according to the bill’s sponsor, Ximena Flores.

The law was proposed after an undercover investigation by the nonprofit-making London-based group Animal Defenders International (ADI) found widespread abuse in circuses operating in Bolivia.

Being born into wealth helps people advance in life, and for people who have indeed worked for their fortune, as opposed to be being born into it, realize that knowing other rich people helps just as much as being rich. This is why people like the Late Body Shop founder leave relatively very little material to their children.

Many of these rich do not come from riches. They are self-made, and generally the self-made have a different attitude to money – or specifically, the acquisition of money – compared with those who have always had it. They generally do not, for example, have the “legacy assets” of the old rich – the 4,000-acre pile in Scotland that has been in the family for generations and must be passed on in good nick; or the idea of noblesse oblige that used to go with such assets: the responsibility to the tenants of the land, to the local community. “With inherited wealth, the current generation may simply consider themselves custodians for the time being of the family wealth and will follow the path laid down over many generations,” says Stuart Chappell, director of Barclays Wealth. “With self-generated wealth, it is the responsibility of those who made the wealth to decide what is to happen after they are gone. It is more likely that the creators of new money will feel that those who follow them should not be ‘feather-bedded’.”

David Byrne, of Talking Heads fame, has some advice for musicians so they can succeed in this new age:

I would personally advise artists to hold on to their publishing rights (well, as much of them as they can). Publishing royalties are how you get paid if someone covers, samples, or licenses your song for a movie or commercial. This, for a songwriter, is your pension plan.

Increasingly, it’s possible for artists to hold on to the copyrights for their recordings as well. This guarantees them another lucrative piece of the licensing pie and also gives them the right to exploit their work in mediums to be invented in the future — musical brain implants and the like.

No single model will work for everyone. There’s room for all of us. Some artists are the Coke and Pepsi of music, while others are the fine wine — or the funky home-brewed moonshine. And that’s fine. I like Rihanna’s “Umbrella” and Christina Aguilera’s “Ain’t No Other Man.” Sometimes a corporate soft drink is what you want — just not at the expense of the other thing. In the recent past, it often seemed like all or nothing, but maybe now we won’t be forced to choose.

Ultimately, all these scenarios have to satisfy the same human urges: What do we need music to do? How do we visit the land in our head and the place in our heart that music takes us to? Can I get a round-trip ticket?

Next month, October (ROCKtober) 16 and 17, to be precise, people will stand up to draw attention to international poverty. You can join millions of people from around the world to send a message to politicians that you Stand Up and Speak Out against poverty and inequality.

In 2000, world leaders from 189 countries signed up to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs ) — a global commitment to halve extreme poverty by 2015.

Last year, more than 23 million people in 87 countries stood up and took action to remind them of this promise. It was the largest single coordinated mobilization in the history of the Guinness World Records.