12/31/2008 PERMALINK
Now you can have your very own Xerox PARC R&D wonderlab
Designed to let you unleash your inner inventor, TechShop is a 15,000 square-foot membership-based workshop in Menlo Park. Members get to tinker together the projects of their dreams with access to a fully equipped machine shop, along with assistance and instruction from a tribe of like-minded hackers. It's a health club with machine tools. Your own personal Xerox PARC R&D wonderlab. A place where you can really make it happen! Support this awesome concept, if every town had a place like this the future would get invented twice as fast ... more

12/31/2008 PERMALINK
Future mobile pod concepts from Motorsport 2025 Design Challenge The winner is Mazada's KAAN ... more

Other inspired designs include Honda's versatile land, sea & air personal transport ... more

And Mitsubishi MMR25 ATV featuring wild looking all terrain, omnidirectional wheels ... more

12/30/2008 PERMALINK
Is a volcano big enough to cause an ice age really about to blow its top?
The most potentially destructive volcano on earth, the Yellowstone Caldera in Wyoming (see map), has recently begun experiencing an unusually strong and persistent earthquake swarm that has scientist concerned because it might indicate an impending eruption (see Today's Seismogram Display). Yellowstone is labeled a super volcano, because the pool of magma under the ground is a stunning 34 miles x 45 miles in size. Large enough that an eruption is expected to eject sufficient material to plunge the entire planet into a new ice age. The ridge shown in the photo is the rim of the huge caldera from the last eruption. Ash recovered from sediment over wide areas of North America shows that Yellowstone has had previous super volcanic eruptions 2.1 million, 1.3 million and 640,000 years ago.
The last time any super volcano erupted was 74,000 years ago, and recent advances in genetic archeology have shown that this eruption reduced the world's human population by over 90%, very nearly causing humanity's extinction. And Yellowstone's eruptions have been even bigger.
Vulcanologists aren't sure what to expect, since they have never observed a super volcano eruption, but they speculate that four warning signs are likely to precede the next eruption: 1. The ground rising due to magma building up beneath. 2. Increased geyser activity. 3. Earthquake swarms. 4. A release of volcanic gases.
Warning signs 1 & 2 have been going on for a number of years now, causing the Yellowstone caldera to be classified as a high threat for volcanic eruption by the U.S. Geological Survey back in 2005. USGS also warned that a Yellowstone eruption would produce "global consequences that are beyond human experience and impossible to anticipate fully."
Now the 3rd warning sign has arrived, but scientist disagree on exactly how much this increases the threat of an imminent eruption. What scientist can agree on is that Yellowstone remains an active super volcano certain to erupt again with catastrophic global consequences, and that our civilization has now entered the geological interval of maximum eruption risk ... more ... BBC/Discovery Channel docudrama of Yellowstone eruption (starts with a feint about a physics project, with Yellowstone eruption coming in at 1:22) ... watch ... History Channel documentary on Super volcano ... watch (Yellowstone eruption USA effects) ... watch (Yellowstone eruption global effects) ... See also: Humods Memes

12/30/2008 PERMALINK
Gene therapy can reversed heart failure damage Long-term gene therapy resulted in improved cardiac function and reversed deterioration of the heart in rats with heart failure. The rats were treated with a gene that generates a peptide called bARKct, which was administered to hearts in combination with recombinant-adeno-associated virus serotype 6 (rAAV6). bARKct works by inhibiting the activation of G protein-coupled receptor kinase 2 (GRK2). GRK2 is a kinase that is increased in heart failure myocardium. Enhanced GRK enzymatic activity contributes to the deterioration of the heart in heart failure, according to Prof. Walter J. Koch, Ph.D., director of the Center for Translational Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University ... more ... See also: Stem cell regeneration can repair inherited heart defects

12/30/2008 PERMALINK
Rewiring the brain with carbon nanotubes can improve neuron performance "Our findings show that carbon nanotubes, which, like the nervous cells of our brain, are excellent electrical signal conductors and form intimate mechanical contacts with cellular membranes, thereby establishing a functional link to neuronal structures," explained Laura Ballerini, a professor of physiology and Maurizio Prato, professor of organic chemistry, both at the University of Trieste, Italy. "Such a functional and mechanical link might favor electrical shortcuts between the proximal and distal compartments of the neuron, therefore improving neuronal performance." ... more ... more

12/30/2008 PERMALINK
Abnormal blood sugar (high or low) accelerates cognitive decline as we age
"This is news even for people without diabetes since blood glucose levels tend to rise as we grow older. Whether through physical exercise, diet or drugs, our research suggests that improving glucose metabolism could help some of us avert the cognitive slide that occurs in many of us as we age," reported lead investigator Scott A. Small, M.D., associate professor of neurology in the Sergievsky Center at Columbia University Medical Center ... more

12/30/2008 PERMALINK
Putting a molecular supercomputer into your pocket Atomic-scale computing, in which computer processes are carried out in a single molecule or using a surface atomic-scale circuit, holds vast promise for the microelectronics industry. It allows computers to continue to increase in processing power through the development of components in the nano- and pico scale. In theory, atomic-scale computing could put computers more powerful than today's supercomputers in everyone's pocket ... more

12/30/2008 PERMALINK
Golden nano-rods precisely control drug release
Using gold nano-rods and infrared light, MIT researchers have developed a drug-delivery system that allows multiple drugs to be released in a controlled fashion. "With a lot of diseases, especially cancer and AIDS, you get a synergistic effect with more than one drug," said Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli, assistant professor of biological and mechanical engineering. Hitting the different types of golden nano-rods shown in the image with different nanometer wavelengths of infrared light, causes each to dissolve and release their drugs in a controlled fashion ... more

12/30/2008 PERMALINK
Implantable respiratory aid and prosthetic lung
The device takes deoxygenated blood, extracted from a main vein, removes carbon dioxide, replaces it with oxygen, and returns the oxygenated blood to the body. Versions of the device can be worn externally of implanted within the body to eliminate the hazard of taking a significant blood flow outside the body. Transfer is controlled to mimic the natural respiratory control mechanism. The external device is easily reversible and the major parts are available for maintenance ... more

12/29/2008 PERMALINK
Is it now possible to reverse the aging process for $25,000 per year?
Telomeres are DNA repeats located at the ends of all chromosomes. They serve as caps that protect our genes. Each time a cell divides, the telomeres grow shorter and shorter. Once telomeres become too short, a cell can no longer divide properly and this is thought by many scientists to be one of the primary causes of aging. But, there is a natural enzyme called telomerase, which can help maintain telomere length, and in 2001 a California bio-tech company Geron discovered TA-65, a single molecule that activates telomerase. Now very encouraging results appear to be coming from early adopters of TA-65, which currently cost around $25,000 for an annual supply ... more

12/29/2008 PERMALINK
When globalized catastrophe hits will our civilization bend or break?
This talk from IEET Fellow Jamais Cascio at the Global Catastrophic Risks Conference considers how to insure that our newly globalized civilization and economy will bend rather than break when we are hit by catastrophes. He recommends designing in resilience, consisting of redundancy, diversity, transparent open systems, flexibility, collaboration, graceful failure, minimal footprint, reversibility, foresight and that all designers adopt as their moto: only you can prevent gray goo! After 2008's experience with mortgage securities from America shutting down bank lending worldwide, and governments pouring in trillions of dollars to no effect, obviously our civilization's systems need tweaking. Our global financial system seems to have lacked all of these things. See also The Humods Worldview ... watch

12/29/2008 PERMALINK
Finally a mass transit system that might actually be fun to use
Utilizing technology and concepts developed by the University of Bristol, ATS Ltd. has designed a mass transit system that features small, independent electric cars running on overhead tracks. The bot-controlled cars can take a family or group of friends directly from one location to another on a system of overhead tracks. Essentially, it is an overhead automatic cab that can get you there in one third of the time necessary on today's busy streets. The first installation is going in now at Heathrow in the U.K., and if it works like the animation shows, it seems like a mass transit breakthrough ... watch

12/29/2008 PERMALINK
Scientists identify genes that made 1918 flu so lethal By mixing and matching a contemporary flu virus with the "Spanish flu" -- a virus that killed between 20 and 50 million people 90 years ago in history's most devastating outbreak of infectious disease -- researchers have identified a set of three genes that helped underpin the extraordinary virulence of the 1918 virus by allowing it to replicate in the lungs of victims. "Conventional flu viruses replicate mainly in the upper respiratory tract: the mouth, nose and throat. The 1918 virus replicates in the upper respiratory tract, but also in the lungs," explained University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka ... more

12/29/2008 PERMALINK
Neural birth defects & learning disabilities reversed with stem cells
Prof. Joseph Yanai and his associates at the Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School have succeeded in reversing neural and behavioral birth defects, such as learning disabilities, in laboratory tests with mice by using mouse embryonic neural stem cells. These cells migrate in the brain, search for the deficiency that caused the defect, and then differentiate into becoming the cells needed to repair the damage. In the images new brain cells (the green stains) were induced in the heroin damaged mouse brain by transplantation of neural stem cells ... more

12/29/2008 PERMALINK
Your brain makes much better decisions without your conscious help Neuroscientists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky received a 2002 Nobel Prize for their 1979 research that argued humans rarely make rational decisions and this has since become conventional wisdom among cognition researchers. But Alex Pouget, associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester, has now shown that people almost alway make optimal decisions when their unconscious brain is making the choice. "You don't consciously decide to stop at a red light or steer around an obstacle in the road," says Pouget. "Once we started looking at the decisions our brains make without our knowledge, we found that they almost always reach the right decision, given the information they had to work with." ... more

12/29/2008 PERMALINK
Breakthrough in the production of double-walled carbon nanotubes
Double-walled carbon nanotubes have many intriguing properties that could make a number of breakthroughs possible, including the tremendous strength necessary to build an elevator into space. Previously existing techniques for synthesizing them also produce unwanted single- and multi-walled nanotubes, making study difficult and applications requiring quantities of these unique nanotubes impossible. But now, two Northwestern University researchers have solved this problem with a new technique called density gradient ultracentrifugation that can cleanly and easily separate the double-walled nanotubes (DWNTs) from the single-walled nanotubes (SWNTs) and multi-walled nanotubes (MWNTs) ... more

12/28/2008 PERMALINK
Is a flawed economic theory wrecking the world's economy? An individual, company or city with heavy debt and shrinking revenues knows instinctively that they must tighten their belt in hard times. But according to the theories of economist John Maynard Keynes, even when national governments are in debt up to their taxpayer's eyeballs and have currencies that are already weak as a result. In a downturn, they should borrow or printing new money and spend it freely to bailout companies and individuals that made bad economic choices. Many economist outside the employ of governments think Keynes' ideas are pseudo-scientific nonsense that has only managed to hold sway for so many years because the theory promises painless solutions to all economic downturns can be delivered by big government. Politicos love for the public to hear how necessary they are and so are willing to richly reward economists willing to support Keynes' failed theory with lucrative government grants and jobs. And this creates the bad meme support loop that continues to propagate this destructive economic theory to new generations of government policy makers ... more ... watch

12/28/2008 PERMALINK
Researchers find nature's shut-off switch for cellulose production
Purdue University researchers, lead by Professor Nicholas Carpita, have found the cellular mechanism that naturally shuts down cellulose production in plants and are busy learning how to keep that switch turned on is. Blocking the off-switch could vast increase plant biomass production to dramatically lower the production cost of plant-based biofuels ... more

12/28/2008 PERMALINK
Silicon Valley startup SpaceX to resupply NASA's Space Station
In a huge breakthrough for space exploration, NASA today announced its selection of the Space X Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft for the International Space Station (ISS) Cargo Resupply Services (CRS) contract award. The contract is for a guaranteed minimum of 20,000 kg to be carried to the International Space Station. In the old aviation days, air mail subsidies were used to spark innovation in aircraft design and we went from the Wright Brother's plane to the 707 in just 50 years. To spark innovation in space the politicos decided to build a huge bureaucracy instead, and after 50 years we have a stagnant space program featuring an incredibly costly and complex shuttle with a tendency to explode. High time that NASA acknowledged their huge mistake that has set back space colonization by half a century and returned to the innovation stimulation method that helped to foster incredibly rapid innovation in aviation ... more

12/28/2008 PERMALINK
Justice Dept. wants to put Roadside Torture Devices (RTDs) into police cars
The US Department of Justice is looking at two portable non-lethal devices developed by the Air Force to allow cops to inflict excruciating pain on American citizens from a safe distance using beams of laser light or microwaves, with the intention of putting these Roadside Torture Devices (RTDs) into police cars nationwide ... more ... If researchers don't stop engineering devices that make it extremely easy for a tiny elite to subdue and dominate the population of a country, the entire world will sink into tyranny, see also: The Humods Worldview and to learn about more deadly Weapons Of Mass Oppression (WOMO) currently under development by our Air Force.

12/28/2008 PERMALINK
Biologists discover atomic structure of powerful viral 'molecular motor'
Researchers have learned the mechanism used to packages DNA into the head segment of some viruses during their assembly, an essential step in their ability to multiply and infect new host organisms. Parts of the motor move in sequence like the pistons in a car's engine, progressively drawing the genetic material into the virus's head, or capsid, said Michael Rossmann, Purdue's Hanley Distinguished Professor of Biological Sciences ... more

12/28/2008 PERMALINK
Test of new global weather model produces breakthrough results Breakthrough results have been obtained from a test of the first computer model that simulates the global atmosphere with a resolution down to individual clouds. The model, called the Nonhydrostatic ICosahedral Atmospheric Model (NICAM), was developed for the supercomputer Earth Simulator at JAMSTEC. In the test, atmospheric conditions present 1-2 weeks before the formation of cyclones in the Indian Ocean in December 2006 and January 2007 were fed in. The model captured the timing and location of the formation of the observed cyclones as well as their paths and overall evolution. "We attribute the successful simulation to the realistic representation of both the large-scale circulation and the embedded convective vortices and their merging," says Hironori Fudeyasu, lead author of the study and IPRC postdoctoral fellow ... more

12/28/2008 PERMALINK
Grad student lowers cost of portable ultrasound devices from $20,000 to $100
A prototype of a therapeutic ultrasound device fits in the palm of a hand, is battery-powered and could help to stabilize a gunshot wound or deliver drugs to brain cancer patients. It is wired to a ceramic probe, called a transducer, and can create sound waves so strong that they instantly cause water to bubble into steam. Tinkering in his Olin Hall lab, George K. Lewis, a third-year Cornell Ph.D. student in biomedical engineering creates ultrasound devices that are smaller, more powerful and many times less expensive than today's models. Devices today can weigh 30 pounds and cost $20,000, while his pocket-sized device weighs in at less than a pound and cost only $100 to build. He envisions a world where therapeutic ultrasound machines are found in every hospital and medical research lab ... more

12/28/2008 PERMALINK
Big Brother will soon have smart bot cameras watching you
In a betrayal of human dignity and freedom, Ohio State engineers are developing a computerized surveillance bot that when completed will have the ability to automatically recognize if a person on the street is acting suspiciously, whatever that means. The goal is a networked surveillance system that allows Big Brother's henchmen to spy on every citizen efficiently with the smart bot cameras handling most of the workload by flagging and tracking suspicious citizens automatically. This is the kind of technology that makes tyranny extremely easy to implement that no moral scientist or engineer should work on, see The Humods Worldview. Aspiring despots everywhere rejoice at the lack of ethics that allows some researchers to create these types of technologies ... more

12/28/2008 PERMALINK
Modding algae to make biofuel instead of sugar UC Berkeley researchers have identified the genetic instructions in the algae genome responsible for deploying about 600 chlorophyll molecules in the cell's light-gathering antennae. They believe that the algae can get along with as few as 130 molecules. Basically the scientists seek to divert the normal function of photosynthesis from generating biomass to making products such as lipids, hydrocarbons, and hydrogen ... more

12/27/2008 PERMALINK
Nanotubes & laminin combined to form perfect neural interface electrodes
A key challenge to engineering neural interfaces is to minimize the immune response toward implanted electrodes. The unique properties of carbon nanotubes make them excellent candidates for neural interfaces, but their adoption hinges on finding approaches for humanizing their composites. Researcher have now fabricated composites assembled from single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and laminin, which is an essential part of the human extracellular matrix ... more ... See also: Neurons are more excited by carbon nanotubes than geeks are by Milla Jovovich

12/27/2008 PERMALINK
Building a machine that can learn from experience just like humans do
As part of their Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics (SyNAPSE) project, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded $4.9 million to a group of researchers for the creation of a "cognitive computer" able to function on the level of a small mammalian brain. So what's the first step? "Reward systems are important," says University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Giulio Tononi, an internationally known expert on consciousness working on the project. "It needs to learn from experience just like we do." ... more

12/27/2008 PERMALINK
Measurable human impact on the climate began 8,000 years ago
The common wisdom is that the invention of the steam engine and the advent of the coal-fueled industrial age marked the beginning of human influence on global climate. But gathering physical evidence, backed by powerful simulations on the world's most advanced computer climate models, supports the view that human-induced climate change began not 200 years ago, but thousands of years ago with the onset of large-scale agriculture in Asia and extensive deforestation in Europe ... more

12/27/2008 PERMALINK
Amateur gene hackers slicing & dicing at home to create new lifeforms In her San Francisco dining room lab, computer programmer Meredith L. Patterson is trying to genetically altered yogurt bacteria to glow green in the presence of melamine, the potentially deadly chemical greedy and murderous Chinese manufacturers added to baby formula and pet food. "People can really work on projects for the good of humanity while learning about something they want to learn about in the process," says Patterson. The fact that real work can be done with very simple gear has gene hacking growing rapidly in popularity as a geek hobby ... more

12/27/2008 PERMALINK
Finally, an affordable, neighbor-friendly wind power generator
Wind generator designs have traditionally been too expensive, too hard to install, ugly and loud enough to disturb your neighbors. Now the Windspire from Mariah Power offers a low cost, attractive, plug-n-produce wind power generator that is safe, attractive and virtually silent. At only 30 feet tall and 2 feet in radius, Windspire is distinguished by its uniquely slender vertical axis design that allows Windspire to operate with a low tip speed ratio (the edges of the rotor spin just 2 to 3 times the speed of the wind), which elemenates the noise making tendency of traditional propellor designs. In perhaps the ultimate tribute to the designer, universities and businesses are putting these units into campus gardens in place of previously planned sculptures ... more

12/27/2008 PERMALINK
Nanoparticles can make your teeth too slippery to get cavities
Clarkson University Center for Advanced Materials Processing (CAMP) Professor Igor Sokolov and graduate student Ravi M. Gaikwad have discovered a new method of protecting teeth from cavities by ultrafine polishing with silica nanoparticles. The researchers adopted polishing technology used in the semiconductor industry to polish the surface of human teeth down to nanoscale smoothness. Roughness left on the tooth after the polishing is about 100,000 times smaller than a grain of sand. Sokolov and Gaikwad showed that teeth polished in this way become too "slippery" for the "bad" bacteria that is responsible for the destruction of dental enamel ... more

12/27/2008 PERMALINK
Scientists create titanium-based structural metallic-glass composites
Scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a range of structural metallic-glass composites, based in titanium, that are lighter and less expensive than any the group had previously created, while still maintaining their toughness and ductility--the ability to be deformed without breaking. Using new strategies for creating the liquid-metal composites scientists have created "alloys with unrivaled strength and toughness," notes Douglas Hofmann ... more

12/27/2008 PERMALINK
Targeting and erasing the bad memories from your mind In a discovery that may one day lead to the ability to erase debilitating painful memories and addictions from the brain, researchers at SUNY Downstate Medical Center have found that a molecule known to preserve memories - PKMzeta - specifically stores complex, high-quality memories that provide detailed information about an animal's location, fears, and actions, but does not control the ability to process or express this information. This finding suggests that PKMzeta erasure that is designed to target specific debilitating memories could be effective against the offending memory while sparing the computational function of brain ... more ... See also: Ready for your new spotless mind - memories safely & selectively erased

12/26/2008 PERMALINK
Cancer and normal cell gene comparisons finds 157 rearrangements A newly published genome sequence of a breast cancer cell line reveals a heavily rearranged genetic blueprint involving breaks and fusions of genes and a broken DNA repair machinery, said researchers. "It's like a computer program that has become buggy and transcends into something dangerous," said Dr. Aleksandar Milosavljevic, associate professor in the BCM Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine ... more

12/26/2008 PERMALINK
American dogs get far more advanced health care than American childen "The general public really isn't aware yet of what's going on," said Robert J. Harman, a veterinarian who began using stem cell treatment in 2004 on horses, in 2005 on dogs, and in 2006 on cats. "They think all of this work is still in the research stage. Some days I feel like an evangelist, and I have to continue to get out the word. There are places in the world where they're doing this on humans, not dogs. It works, and it's a dramatic new tool that we can all be pretty excited about." Blood transfusions were prohibited for decades by government regulators, because the Christians back then were convinced that our souls circulated around inside our blood streams, and transfusions might also transfer the soul. Today the FDA is full of people appointed for their willingness to put stupid religious beliefs like that, ahead of science, and they are holding back stem cell treatments. New taboo, same old ignorance ... more

12/25/2008 PERMALINK
Your level of popularity appears to be genetically determined "Your genes predispose you to certain behaviors and those behaviors elicit different kinds of social reactions from others," said behavioral geneticist S. Alexandra Burt, assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University. Male college students who had a gene associated with rule-breaking behavior were rated most popular by a group of previously unacquainted peers ... more

12/24/2008 PERMALINK
Augmented Intelligence & Open Source Collaboration in the New Year The universe we live in acts as an intelligence creation engine, wiping out any lifeforms that do not get smart enough fast enough. Humods are all that stand between the human cognitive line and extinction ~ see Humods Worldview. Bio & nano molecular modding technologies have undreamed of power that can extend our line for millions of generations, but they can also destroy us unless we are thoughtful about how we apply them. The old human institutional tools can be of no help, the two tools that can get us through this safely are the new humods institutional tools of Augmented Intelligence and Open Source Collaboration. Make it your new year's resolution that you will do all you can to speed the development and application of both these tools.

12/24/2008 PERMALINK
Has the time arrived for space-based solar power?
Researcher say that all the world's energy needs could be satisfied without creating any pollution by using solar power collected from geosynchronous satellite platforms and beamed down to earth as microwaves, but much cheaper ways to get payloads in orbit are needed ... more

12/24/2008 PERMALINK
Area of human brain that chooses words for speech identified New research by a Rice University psychologist clearly identifies the parts of the brain involved in the process of choosing appropriate words during speech ... more

12/24/2008 PERMALINK
Solving the mysteries of metallic glass Researchers at MIT have made significant progress in understanding a class of materials that has resisted analysis for decades. Their findings could lead to the rapid discovery of a variety of useful new kinds of glass made of metallic alloys. Glasses are solids whose structure is essentially that of a liquid, with atoms arranged randomly instead of in the ordered patterns of a crystal ... more

12/24/2008 PERMALINK
Human protein modded to accelerate blood clotting
Researchers have made several, subtle changes in the structure of a key protein, dramatically increasing its ability to drive blood clotting. "Our goal is to improve upon nature by developing gain-of-function factor VIII proteins that are superior to the version of the protein found in healthy individuals," said Philip Fay, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of Rochester Medical Center ... more

12/23/2008 PERMALINK
Breaktrough 4 nanometer nanobot wins prize
Prof. James M. Tour, a synthetic organic chemist at Rice University has been awarded the prestigious Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for, among other breakthroughs, his group's development of his amazing little nanocar, which is four nanometers across and includes a chassis with an engine, a pivoting suspension and rotating axles attached to rolling buckyball wheels, each made of 60 carbon atoms ... more

12/23/2008 PERMALINK
Billboards that watch you to see if you are watching them At a Tokyo railway station above a flat-panel display hawking DVDs and books sits a small camera hooked up to some image processing software. When trials begin in January the camera will scan travelers to see how many of them are taking note of the panel. It's part of a technology test being run by NTT Communications that could be soon coming to a billboard near you ... more

12/23/2008 PERMALINK
Major breakthrough in understanding of bacterial proteins Researchers have devised a computational method that predicts how bacterial proteins fold and interact with remarkable accuracy. "I think it's a quantum leap," says team leader James Hoch, a professor at The Scripps Research Institute. The breakthrough promises to allow development of new antibiotics that target and block newly identified protein interactions vital to the survival of pathogenic bacteria. Longer term, the new technique could allow similar protein predictive capabilities for humans and other organisms ... more

12/23/2008 PERMALINK
"I'm not impressed by humanity's achievements in comparison to what is coming" The quote above is from a thought provoking video that appeared on the Discovery Channel some years ago that has recently been put on YouTube. In the video, Prof. Hugo de Garis, who runs the Artificial Brain lab at Xiamen University, considers the risk/reward ratio of developing smart bots that exceed human levels of intelligence ... watch

12/23/2008 PERMALINK
A cure for premature aging disease might also extend normal lifespans Progeria is a rare disease that causes children to age rapidly. It is caused by Progerin, a defective, truncated version of the lamin A protein. The discovery of the gene responsible for this genetic defect five years ago led scientists to the experimental drug that is now being evaluated in 28 children with this "premature aging" disease. Recent research indicates that all people produce small amounts of progerin, raising the possibility that eliminating progerin in normal people might significantly extend their lifespans ... more

12/23/2008 PERMALINK
Researchers create artificial human bone marrow in a test tube Artificial bone marrow that can continuously make red and white blood cells has been created in a University of Michigan lab. This development could lead to simpler pharmaceutical drug testing, closer study of immune system defects and a continuous supply of blood for transfusions. The marrow grows on a 3-D scaffold that mimics the tissues supporting bone marrow in the body, said Nicholas Kotov, a professor in the U-M department of Biomedical Engineering. The marrow is not made to be implanted in the body, it is designed to function as a blood fab in a test tube ... more

12/22/2008 PERMALINK
Happiness really is contagious, spreading rapidly in social networks New research from James Fowler of UC San Diego and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard Medical School shows that happiness spreads far and wide through a social network - traveling not just the well-known path from one person to another but even to people up to three degrees removed. A key determinant of your level of happiness is the happiness of your friends and associates ... more

12/22/2008 PERMALINK
E. coli modded to produce antibiotic, anticancer drugs Researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have taken a major step forward in the field of metabolic engineering, successfully using the bacterium Escherichia coli to synthesize a class of natural products known bacterial aromatic polyketides, which include important antibiotic and anticancer drugs ... more

12/22/2008 PERMALINK
Developing a bot that lets your computer understand you You've probably heard of the effort to create a semantic web bot, search code that doesn't just parse some keywords in your inquiry but actually understands your question's context and can finds for you the exact data that you need. Now a European project called NEPOMUK (Networked Environment for Personalized, Ontology-based Management of Unified Knowledge) is seeking to bring the same sort of capabilities to your personal computer ... more

12/22/2008 PERMALINK
A lint brush in your blood stream able to filter out all cancer cells
Cornell researcher Michael King has developed what he calls a lethal "lint brush" for the blood -- a tiny, implantable device that captures and kills cancer cells in the bloodstream before they spread through the body. The strategy takes advantage of the body's natural mechanism for fighting infection and could lead to new treatments for a variety of cancers, said King, who is an associate professor of biomedical engineering ... more

12/22/2008 PERMALINK
Watch Yasukawa Electric's SmartPal V service bot in action
Watch as the SmartPal V service bot shows the dexterity of its sensors, controllers and nine joint, three finger hands. This bot is intended to be a work support robot for non-manufacturing applications initially with future models designed to assist humans by performing chores inside our homes ... watch

12/22/2008 PERMALINK
C dots find-image-kill tumors, then exit with your next beer Researchers have created a new generation of near-infrared fluorescent core-shell silica-based nanoparticles (C dot bots) that can molecularly targeted tumors and deliver treatment molecules, featuring high biostability and biocompatibility. Then they are able to efficiently clear clearance out of the body after doing their work using the same clearance mechanism employed by a six-pack of beer. Additionally, as the C dots collect in tumors, they can make even small tumors show up exceptionally well on optical-PET medical imaging devices. The results, say researchers, are a promising platform for tumor targeting and treatment ... more

12/22/2008 PERMALINK
Adult stem cells made from disease suffers' skin offers powerful new path to cures Researchers have successfully reprogrammed skin cells from a patient with a genetic disease into stem cells that can be used as a powerful tool for model and understanding the disease processes and screen drugs for use against it ... more

12/22/2008 PERMALINK
Controlled structural defects can turn nanotubes into electronic circuits New research shows that deliberate introduction of structural defects at specific sites in carbon nanotubes can guide electrons along specific paths, providing a way to fabricate complex electronic circuits from nanotubes ... more

12/21/2008 PERMALINK
Neurons are more excited by carbon nanotubes than geeks are by Milla Jovovich
In fantastic news for all who would like to mod their brains into net-connected super computers as quickly as possible. New research shows that carbon nanotubes, which like neurons are highly electrically conductive, bond perfectly with neurons to form extremely tight contacts with neuronal cell membranes. Unlike the metal electrodes that are currently used in research and clinical applications, the nanotubes can create shortcuts between the distal and proximal compartments of the neuron, resulting in enhanced neuronal excitability. "This result is extremely relevant for the emerging field of neuro-engineering and neuroprosthetics," explains Prof. Michele Giugliano, Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Antwerp ... more

12/21/2008 PERMALINK
Navy rolls out the most fearsome aerial terminator bot yet
The X-47B will be a transformational, carrier-capable, multi-mission, unmanned combat air vehicle. Strike fighter-sized, it is a survivable, long range, high endurance and persistent platform capable of a variety of missions including Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, and Time Sensitive Targeting/Strike. The new aircraft is the first of two aircraft Northrop Grumman will produce for the Navy to demonstrate unmanned combat aircraft operations from the deck of an aircraft carrier ... more

12/20/2008 PERMALINK
Designing bots that are symbiotic with humans
With their rapidly aging population and a serious labor shortage, the Japanese have urgent efforts underway at a number of labs to develop human symbiotic robots that can support human daily activities. It is a huge challenge, as these bots must be able to do many jobs in the unstructured environment of a home and communicate with humans to determine their needs. One of the most impressive bots in this effort is Twendy-One ... Waseda University's Sugano Laboratory

12/20/2008 PERMALINK
Embryo's genes screened to eliminate high cancer risk The first baby girl in Britain to be genetically screened to be free of a defective family gene causing a very high risk of breast cancer is due to be born any day now. Without the embryo screening, the child would have had a 50-80% chance of suffering from breast cancer ... BBC

12/19/2008 PERMALINK
Restoring your brain's ability to rejuvenate itself Researchers have discovered why your brain loses its capacity to re-grow connections and repair itself, knowledge that could lead to therapeutics that can rejuvenate the brain. The study identifies a set of proteins, calpain and cortactin, which regulate and control the sprouting of neurons, a mechanism known as neural plasticity. "This discovery is exciting because we now know that neurons haven't lost their capacity to re-grow connections, but instead are under constant repression by the protein calpain," says postdoctoral fellow Ana Mingorance-Le Meur, who led the investigation along with UBC Professor Timothy O'Connor. "If we can target therapies that block this mechanism, then neurons should be able to sprout new connections, therefore stimulating the brain's ability to repair its wiring network." ... University of British Columbia

12/19/2008 PERMALINK
Did post-pandemic reforestation help trigger the Little Ice Age Some recent research has seemed to provide evidence that human activity might be holding back a cycle that would have otherwise resulted in the earth already plunging back into another ice age. Now comes a study reviewing evidence that suggests post-pandemic reforestation might have helped trigger what is know as the Little Ice Age, a period of below normal temperatures that lasted from around 1500 to 1750 ... Stanford

12/19/2008 PERMALINK
Has universal ageing mechanism been found? As all organisms get older, genes start to be expressed incorrectly causing the effects of aging. While sunlight or chemicals are known to cause limited DNA damage, how more widespread changes in gene expression come about has been unclear. Now researchers have shown that Sir2 causes this effect in yeast and SIRT1, the mammalian version of Sir2, does the same in mice. This strongly suggests that a similar process could be going on in humans, suggesting a promising path towards mitigating the effects of aging ... more

12/19/2008 PERMALINK
Bot swarm cooperates in first ever automated kidnapping
Third Place in our Creepiest Bot Research Videos of All Time Competition goes to the engineers at the Miniature Mobile Robots Group inside the LSRO Lab in Lausanne for their new vid showing their swarm bots autonomously linking up and cooperating to obtain the strength necessary to drag off a kid ... watch. Holding onto first place is the all-time classic Air Force bugbot attack swarm animation showing how the flying bug-sized bots that the Air Force is currently developing will soon be able to quickly find you, no matter where you are hiding, and kill or incapacitate you by landing on your neck and releasing a chemical weapon. And in second place is the Big Dog bot movie for just looking so weirdly alive when it walks that it triggers the flight or fight response in humans.

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
Low-carb diets make you dumber A new study shows that when dieters eliminate carbohydrates from their meals, they performed more poorly on memory-based tasks than when they reduce calories, but maintain carbohydrates. When carbohydrates were reintroduced, cognition skills returned to normal ... Tufts University

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
Scientists watch membrane fission in real time Researchers have discovered how a cell's outer membrane pinches a little pouch from itself to bring molecules outside the cell inside without making holes that leak fluid from either side of the membrane ... Scripps Research Institute

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
Reading the images in your dreams directly from your brain waves Researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories say they have succeeded in processing and displaying images directly from the human brain and claim that their technology could eventually be used to figure out dreams and other images by reading minds directly ... more

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
Smart LED lighting will save trillions of dollars
"What the transistor meant to the development of electronics, the LED means to the field of photonics. This core device has the potential to revolutionize how we use light," said E. Fred Schubert and Jong Kyu Kim. The scientists calculate that replacing the world's lighting with smart, energy-efficient LEDs will reduce global oil consumption by 962 million barrels, reduce the need for 280 global power plants, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 10.68 gigatons, and save the world's consumers a truly remarkable total of $1.83 trillion every ten years ... RPI

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
Better designs for turning the ocean's waves into electricity Researchers are designing a pilot-scale device that will capture significantly more of the energy in ocean waves than existing systems, and use it to power an electricity-generating turbine. Engineers have developed computer simulations that can accurately predict wave forces on a given device and the motion of the device that will result to speed their design efforts ... MIT

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
Breakthrough in sequencing monoclonal antibodies A new shotgun protein sequencing method reduces the time required to sequence an unknown antibody from weeks or months to under 36 hours. "Our new approach has the potential to be a disruptive technology for all protein sequencing applications," said Nuno Bandeira, lead researcher ... University of California, San Diego

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
Can sound waves generate practical fusion power?
Magnetized target fusion (MTF) uses an acoustic wave approach to, hopefully, generate a practical fusion electricity generator. The device is a sphere surrounded by steam pistons that drive a pressure wave inward to generate fusion compressions twice every second ... more

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
Adult stem cell treatment for heart failure goes into clinical trials Sixty patients are being recruited for this clinical trial through hospitals nationwide, to examine the safety and feasibility of administering adult stems cells to treat congestive heart failure. The cells, derived from bone marrow, are injected by a catheter directly into the heart muscle ... UC San Diego Medical Center

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
Turning a food poisoning bacteria into a biofuel fab Researchers have succeeded in genetically modifying Escherichia coli, a bacterium often associated with food poisoning, to produce the long-chain alcohols essential for the creation of biofuels ... UCLA

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
RNAi can act like a vaccine giving immunity to re-infection Researchers are finding ways to use the gene silencing mechanism known as RNA interference to treat a host of diseases. Now, a new study opens up an entirely new possibility for this powerful tool, demonstrating for the first time that RNA interference can be used to develope vaccines. "Our data suggest that an RNAi prophylactic treatment can reduce infection and disease pathogenesis while also acting like a vaccine to engender immunity that protects against subsequent re-infection," said Ralph Tripp ... University of Georgia

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
Fully automated fab grows human skin for grafting Until now, culturing skin for grafts has been a slow and expensive manual process, but researchers have changed that by inventing an automated device that uses a gripper arm to transports a biopsy inside, cut the biopsy into small pieces, isolates the different cell types, stimulates their growth, and mixes the skin cells with collagen. A three-dimensional reconstruction of the different skin layers is produced with the aid of a special gel matrix - and the skin is ready. In the final step, the machine packages the cells for shipment. Image shows artificial on left compared to real skin on right ... Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

12/18/2008 PERMALINK
A major breakthrough in prosthetic limbs
A victim of the London bombings has had a prosthetic arm fitted to her bone and skin in an operation which could herald a major breakthrough in reconstruction. This new prosthetic technology can be incorporate directly into the bone without causing infection, according to orthopedic surgeon Steve Cannon ... watch BBC report

12/17/2008 PERMALINK
So where does America's top spy think the financial crisis is heading? With a hundred billion to spend on intelligence gathering and the ability to tap anyone's phone, email or computer without a warrant, where does the Director of the Office of National Intelligence think the current financial crisis might be headed? One of his top economic advisers, James G. Rickards, is quietly making the rounds to brief government agencies on some frightening scenarios.
From a briefing given under the sponsorship of the Navy and the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy on 17Dec2008:
1. The U.S. GDP declines by around 35 percent with crippling deflation taking hold and unemployment doubling or tripling and these conditions continuing for six to seven years.
2. A small group of other nations join together to create a credible, gold-backed, alternative to the dollar. Were this to happen, the briefing speculates that most of the world's investors might go along. As they are currently seething with anger at America's elite for violating their trust by allowing Wall Street to fleece them of over a trillion dollars with worthless but highly rated mortgage securities and Ponzi Schemes. The briefing goes on to speculate that the result of this new more solid currency, would be to cause "the end of the dollar" with America sinking into "even worse inflation than Zimbabwe."

12/17/2008 PERMALINK
World's best urban search and rescue bots show their stuff
The 2008 Thailand Rescue Robot Championship puts the world's best urban search and rescue (USAR) bots to the challenge watch part 1 ... watch part 2

12/17/2008 PERMALINK
Scientists trick bacteria's evolutionary machinery into programming its own suicide "The basic idea is for an antimicrobial to target something in a bacteria that, in order to gain immunity, would require the bacteria to kill itself through a suicide mutation," said Professor Gerard Wong. "It's a Catch-22. Some mutations bacteria can tolerate, and some mutations they cannot tolerate. In this case, the bacteria would have to go through a mutation that would kill it, in order to be immune to these antimicrobials." ... University of Illinois

12/17/2008 PERMALINK
Will mobile phones be the primary net device by 2020? The mobile phone will be "the primary Internet connection and the only one for a majority of the people across the world," the Pew Internet & American Life Project writes in a new The Future of the Internet III report based on a survey of net activists. Actually by 2020, this milestone will be long past. Already mobile net use dominates in the third world and among the young everywhere. By 2020 you won't even think of your mobile net device as a phone. It will be much more of a personal assistant and a Reality Enhancement System (RES), capable of intelligently filtering out and presenting to you the geospacial data that you most need to live your life effectively. Many of your communications with friends and collaborators will be entirely automatic with your net unit automatically adjusting your schedule, if a friend's unit reports they are running late for lunch.

12/16/2008 PERMALINK
Autonomous aquatic communities of floating self-sufficient waterpod habitats
The waterpod is a mobile aquatic habitat designed for nomadic sea living that could be docked together into groups to form ad hoc autonomous water-based communities ... more

12/16/2008 PERMALINK
Mcm10 ~ the actual machinery of life imaged for the first time For the first time, structural biologists have managed to obtain the detailed three-dimensional structure of one of the proteins that form the core of the complex molecular machine, called the replisome, that plant and animal cells assemble to copy their DNA as the first step in cell reproduction. Images shows Mcm10 is shown in a surface view interacting with a single strand of DNA (depicted in red). Mcm10 contains two classic binding scaffolds. One is an OB-fold (OB stands for oligonucleotide/oligosaccharide) shown in green. The other is a structure called a zinc finger shown in blue ... more

12/16/2008 PERMALINK
Modding plant root hairs ups nutrient intake = lots more food New research shows that increasing the length of plant root hairs can boost crop yields by allowing plants to take up minerals and water more efficiently. "Each root hair is a single, elongate cell and the length of each hair depends on having an adequate supply of the plant hormone auxin," explained Angharad Jones. The key is understanding how auxin is delivered to the root hairs in order to promote their growth ... University of Bristol

12/16/2008 PERMALINK
Smart yarn e-textiles that monitor your health
Engineers have demonstrated carbon nanotube-coated smart yarn that conducts electricity and can be woven into soft fabrics that could have the ability to detect blood and monitor your health. These nano-textiles were made by dipping 1.5-millimeter thick cotton yarn into a solution of carbon nanotubes in water and then into a solution of a special sticky polymer in ethanol ... University of Michigan

12/16/2008 PERMALINK
Laser to knock down incoming missiles tested The political right loves to hate stem cell research. The political left loves to hate missile defense. But stem cells can cure a lot of diseases and a computer controlled system of lasers could provide missile defense far better than the current system of Mutually Assured Destruction, which is indeed MAD. Let the Pentagon spend their money on technologies that might actually stand a chance of helping to defend western civilization, rather than spending it on WOMO (Weapons of Mass Oppression) that can be used to destroy it ... more

12/16/2008 PERMALINK
Fixing damaged bone by injecting stem cell toothpaste "Injectable bone is the first delivery system for stem cells and growth factors that forms a material with the strength of a bone," said Robin Quirk co-founder of RegenTec, a University of Nottingham spin-off company. The material acts as bone graft substitute that supports natural bone repair processes and can deliver the patient's own bone progenitor cells and bioactives. It can also release orthobiologicals in a controlled and sustained manner and acts as a cell delivery vehicle for a wide range of stem cell therapies ... more

12/15/2008 PERMALINK
Scans show immune cells actually intercepting parasites Scientists report that they have been able to track immune cells as they patrolled the second-shallowest layer of the skin and when they injected a genetically modified form of the parasite Leishmania major they were able to watch as the immune cells turned from their patrols and move to intercept the parasites ... University of Washington ... more

12/15/2008 PERMALINK
Repairing damaged neural circuits to regain access to lost memories Over the past few years, neuroscientists have begun to recognize the importance of epigenetics--molecular processes that change the expression of genes without altering DNA--in the brain, and in memory in particular. One of the key regulators of epigenetics is a group of enzymes known as histone deacetylases (HDACs), which trigger DNA to wind more tightly around neighboring proteins, ultimately dampening gene expression. "We have solid evidence that HDAC inhibitors massively promote growth of dendrites and increase synaptogenesis [the creation of connections between neurons]," says Li-Huei Tsai, a neuroscientist at MIT. The process may boost memory or allow lost memories to be regained by rewiring or repairing damaged neural circuits .... more

12/15/2008 PERMALINK
Researchers find brain cells that are the key to learning Scientists have found the neurons that are critical to how people and animals learn from experience. Using a new imaging technique called Arc catFISH, researchers have visualized individual neurons in the amygdalas of rat brains that are activated when the animals are given an associative learning task ... University of Washington

12/15/2008 PERMALINK
Modafinil injected into brainstem enhances brain performance By administering a drug that modifies the state of a portion of the brainstem called the locus ceruleus (LC), which was visualized using functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) brain imaging techniques, researchers were able to shift volunteers into a more attentive state in which they showed enhanced coordinated brain activity and performance on a test of attention control ... University of California, Davis

12/15/2008 PERMALINK
Just one adult stem cell can restore lost limb function A single adult stem cell can self renew and repair tissue damage in a live mammal. The transplanted adult stem cell and its differentiated descendants restored lost function to mice with hind limb muscle tissue damage ... more

12/15/2008 PERMALINK
Politicos block free wireless net for most Americans Silicon valley entrepreneurs want to offer DSL-speed wireless internet access to 95% of Americans for free, FCC chairman scheduled a vote on allowing service. Then the wireless phone companies led by T-Mobile get the many politicos in their pay to put a block on it. America grew great by rewarding entrepreneurs who created new stuff, but now those that control old stuff are able to buy politicos to hold back the new so they can keep overcharging you ... more

12/15/2008 PERMALINK
New Hybrid Nanostructures Detect Nanoscale Magnetism The image shows a scanning electron micrograph of cobalt nanoclusters embedded in multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Researchers used these new hybrid structures, the first of their kind, to detect magnetism at the nanoscale opening up many possibilities including much more densely packed computer storage devices ... Rensselaer

12/15/2008 PERMALINK
Breakthrough in reprogramming cells into stem cells Researchers have greatly simplified the creation of so-called induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, cutting the number of viruses used in the reprogramming process from four to one ... Whitehead Institute

12/15/2008 PERMALINK
Iraq offers the perfect excuse for developing WOMO (Weapons Of Mass Oppression)
Seeing the future of miniature surveillance and terminator bots in this Air Force produced video should scare you silly. Tiny house fly size bots that can find you, land on the back of your neck and disable or kill you with a chemical weapon or micro-explosive are under development by our Air Force. Micro bots like these will give a small group of oppressors the ability to completely dominate and control ANY urban population far more effectively than in George Orwell's worst nightmare. Having lost their main mission of defending Europe when the Soviet Union collapsed, the Air Force is looking for new missions to justify their enormous budget. But developing Weapons Of Mass Oppression (WOMO) that will make resistance futile should some tyrannical future President decide to end America's freedom and democracy is NOT the right mission. Air Force officers should remember the oath they took to uphold and defend the Constitution, and look elsewhere. Working to develop WOMO is a crime against humanity. Everyone you know should screen this frightening video.