HUMODS: July 2009

7/29/2009 PERMALINK

Re-engineering your cells to keep your body forever thin

Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have engineered mouse and human cells to produce brown fat cells (image shows engineered cells). Brown fat cells are a natural energy-burning type of fat that counteracts obesity and the ability to produce them offers a new way to treat obesity and diabetes. To perform the feat, a team led by Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, identified both parts of a molecular switch that normally causes some immature muscle cells in the embryo to become brown fat cells. The scientists then manipulate the switch to force other types of cells in the laboratory to produce brown fat, known as Brown Adipose Tissue (BAT). Next, they transplanted these synthetic brown fat precursors, known as eBAT (engineered BAT), into adult mice to augment their innate stores of brown fat. Tests showed that the brown fat transplants were burning caloric energy at a high rate -- energy that otherwise would have been stored as fat in white adipose tissue. "Since brown fat cells have very high capacity to dissipate excess energy and counteract obesity, eBAT has a very high potential for treating obesity," said Shingo Kajimura, PhD, lead author of the paper. "We are currently working on this."

7/29/2009 PERMALINK

Reprogramming human cells without inserting genes

A research team at Worcester Polytechnic Institute has discovered a way to turn on stem cell genes in human fibroblasts (skin cells) without the risks associated with inserting extra genes or using viruses. This discovery opens a new avenue for reprogramming cells that could eventually lead to treatments for a range of human diseases and traumatic injuries by coaxing a patient's own cells to repair and regenerate the damaged tissues. "We show that by manipulating culture conditions alone, we can achieve changes in fibroblasts that would be beneficial in development of patient-specific cell therapy approaches," the authors wrote in the paper.

Genes OCT4, SOX2 and NANOG are accepted as markers of pluripotency because they are active in stem cells, but become dormant once the stem cells begin to differentiate. The team turned on these existing, yet dormant, stem cell genes by lowering the amount of atmospheric oxygen the cells were exposed to, and by adding a protein called fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) to the culture medium. FGF2 is a naturally occurring protein that is known to be vital for maintaining the pluripotency of embryonic stem cells.

7/29/2009 PERMALINK

Freshly crushed garlic better for the heart than processed

A new study reports the first scientific evidence that freshly crushed garlic has more potent heart-healthy effects than dried garlic. It also challenges the widespread belief that most of garlic's benefits are due to its rich array of antioxidants. Instead, garlic's heart-healthy effects seem to result mainly from hydrogen sulfide, a chemical signaling substance that forms after garlic is cut or crushed and relaxes blood vessels when eaten.

7/29/2009 PERMALINK

Teaching a bot how to learn the same way a child does

Iowa State's Developmental Robotics Lab has created a bot that is able to use the same procedural learning methods a child uses to figure out the nature of objects and classify them. Calling their approach Developmental Robotics, research say that it blends robotics, Artificial Intelligence, developmental psychology, developmental neuroscience, and pilosophy.

7/29/2009 PERMALINK

New bot is more efficient spam zapper

A new bot developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute for Technology can identify spam before it hits the mail server. Known as SNARE (Spatio-temporal Network-level Automatic Reputation Engine), the bot scores each incoming e-mail based on a variety of new criteria that can be gleaned from a single packet of data.

7/29/2009 PERMALINK

Air Force developing 'Suburb Warrior' smart bombs for delivery by aerial bots

The US Air Force has released more about its work on using bots to control urban populations. It involves smart aerial bots that are autonomous enough that only one human pilot would be required to direct the actions of a dozen aerial bots. The smart aerial bots would also carry the new smart bombs, called Suburb Warriors, shown in the image.

7/28/2009 PERMALINK

New enzyme mod brings 'corrective gene' mods closer

Scientists from the Universite de Montreal and McGill University have successfully re-engineered a human enzyme protein that accelerates chemical reactions within the human body. "We can now harness this insight to further advance therapies for genetic diseases," said a member of he research team.

7/28/2009 PERMALINK

A road map for the future of robotics

The Computing Research Association (CRA), a group of academic computer researchers, has put together an estimation of what can be accomplished in bot research over the next 15 years. A quick summary of the report is available from the Foresight Institute or the full report in pdf format is available on the CRA's site.

7/28/2009 PERMALINK

Solar collector + Stirling Engine = much more affordable solar power

The SunCatcher is a 25-kilowatt-electrical (kWe) solar concentrator dish structure with an array of curved glass mirror facets that track the sun and focus the concentrated energy on a Stirling engine that generates power grid-quality electricity. Stirling engines move their pistons by means of internal temperature differentials maintained by any external heat source. Someone has even made a working Stirling model that runs off the heat generated by sitting it on the palm of your hand. They make the perfect generators for a solar power system and have many other possible uses. See also: A new personal transport pod that runs on anything that burns

7/28/2009 PERMALINK

How your body's frontline immune cells decide which cells to attack

Understanding how the body's natural defenses works is the first step towards designing mods to boost these defenses against disease. Natural Killer (NK) cells, a type of white blood cell, are a major component of the human body's innate immune system. Over 1,000 NK cells are found in every drop of blood. They provide a fast front-line defense against tumors, viruses and bacterial infections, by latching onto and killing cells in the human body that are cancerous or are infected with a virus or a bacterial pathogen. On their journey round the human body NK cells regularly latch onto normal non-diseased cells too, before moving off, leaving them unharmed. Now, a team of researchers from Imperial College London have used high speed microscopy imaging techniques to observe the NK cell decision making process in action. The outcome of the decision making process is determined by how receptors on the surface of the NK cell interact with proteins on the surface of the captured cell. Every NK cell has two types of surface receptors - activators, which turn the killing mechanism 'on' and inhibitors which turn the killing mechanism 'off'.

7/28/2009 PERMALINK

The carrot approach facilitates learning, now neuroscientists know why

People who are rewarded for making correct decisions learn more quickly, but little has been understood about how rewards facilitate the brain's learning process. Now, a team headed by Dr. Burkhard Pleger of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, and the University College London have demonstrated that the "reward effect" not only supports the improvement of higher cognitive abilities, but also how brain function in the cortex can be enhanced. Intriguingly, they see that the reward effect can be strengthened using dopaminergic compounds. Targeted manipulation of dopamine levels, thereby enhancing the "teaching signal" in the brain, could open up new possibilities in the treatment of patients, for example, after a stroke.

7/28/2009 PERMALINK

Blood-derived macrophages vital to repair of spinal cord injuries

Using a mouse model of spinal injury, Michal Schwartz and colleagues from the Weizmann institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel tested the effect of macrophages on the recovery process after injury and demonstrate an important anti-inflammatory role for a subset of infiltrating monocyte-derived macrophages that is dependent upon their expression of the anti-inflammatory molecule interleukin-10. These results suggest that this subset of macrophages may have a beneficial effect on spinal cord injuries.

7/27/2009 PERMALINK

Discovery enables decoding of large-scale structure of the brain

Scientists at Rutgers University in Newark and the University of California, Los Angeles have developed a highly accurate way to peer into the brain to uncover a person's mental state and what sort of information is being processed before it reaches awareness. This new window into the brain gives scientists the means of developing a more accurate model of the brain's inner functions. Previously, neuroimaging has focused on pinpointing areas of the brain that are uniquely responsible for specific mental functions. But researchers' analysis of global brain activity found that different processing tasks have their own distinct pattern of neural connections stretching across the brain, similar to the fingerprints that distinctively identify each of us. "By examining the pattern of neural connections, you can predict with a high degree of accuracy what mental processing task a person is doing," said Prof Stephen Hanson.

7/27/2009 PERMALINK

Researchers make movies of bacterial infecting living cells

Researchers have developed a new technique that allows them to make a movie of bacteria infecting a living host cell. The scientists plan to use their system to observe how human pathogens such as Listeria and Trypanosomes interact with the immune system, to gain a better understanding of how bacteria infect cells so that ways of blocking the infection process can be found.

7/27/2009 PERMALINK

Modding your immune system to seek and destroy emerging tumors

A new vaccine is able to prime the immune system to monitor the gut for emerging cancers by teaching it to recognize abnormal versions of the protein MUC1. If an adenoma develops and begins to produce the faulty version of MUC1, the immune system will raise antibodies to attack and destroy the precancerous tissue. "You would be using your immune system as a surveillance mechanism to prevent the development of malignancy," says principal investigator Robert E. Schoen.

7/27/2009 PERMALINK

Breakthrough in biofuels makes them competitive with petroleum

A start-up called Joule Biotechnologies has revealed details of a process that it says can make 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year. If this yield proves realistic in actual production, it would make it practical to replace ALL fossil fuels used for transportation with biofuels. The company also claims that the fuel can be sold for prices competitive with fossil fuels, running the equivalent of $50 per barrel of crude. Genetically engineered microorganisms are grown in specially designed photobioreactors. The microorganisms use energy from the sun to convert carbon dioxide and water into ethanol or hydrocarbon fuels (such as diesel or components of gasoline). The organisms excrete the fuel, which can then be collected using conventional chemical-separation technologies. With yields per acre that are 10 to 15 times higher than that of corn ethanol, all of the country's transportation fuel needs could be supplied from an area only the size of the Texas panhandle.

7/27/2009 PERMALINK

Scientists close to growing replacement bones with stem cells

Scientists achieve breakthrough in understanding how to grow replacement bones with stem cell technology. Researchers have discovered that the 'bone-like' materials that were grown from bone cells from mouse skull and mouse bone marrow stem cells successfully mimicked the hallmarks of real bone, which include stiffness. However, they found that the 'bone-like' material grown from mouse embryonic stem cells was much less stiff and less complex in its mineral composition when compared to the other materials. "Our study provides an important insight into how different cell sources can really influence the quality of bone that we can produce," said Professor Molly Stevens of Imperial College London. "It brings us one step closer to developing materials that will have the highest chance of success when implanted into patients."

7/27/2009 PERMALINK

Gene hacking breakthrough - what took years before, now can be done in a few days

High-throughput sequencing lets biologists scan genomes at the rate of millions of DNA letters, or bases, per hour. By comparison, hacking genes has moved at a snail's pace, until now. In the lab of Harvard Medical School Professor of Genetics George Church two young researchers have developed Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering (MAGE), a process that allows the editing of multiple genes in parallel instead of targeting one gene at a time. Using MAGE they were able to transform E. coli cells into efficient factories producing a desired compound in just three days -- a feat that would formerly have taken months or even years to accomplish. "We initiated the project to close the gap between DNA sequencing technology and cell programming technology," explains graduate student Harris Wang. Adds postdoctoral researcher Farren Isaacs, "We wanted to develop a new tool and demonstrate how to apply it; we were determined to hand labs a hammer and a nail."

7/26/2009 PERMALINK

The only thing we have to fear from a singularity, is fear itself

From the New York Times [clueless old media requiring registration]:

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society's workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Unfortunately, the original Vernor Vinge essay that popularized the concept of a singularity, presented the concept covered in a veil of fear. This helped create a wave of media paranoia about smart machines that has spawned thousands of anti-science articles, TV shows and movies. Fear of a singularity could wind up doing as much to stall human progress as any of the more doltish dogmatic dictates of any of the world's most popular religions.

If you work around the technically oriented, you probably already know smart people that seem to spend much of their life playing computer games. The same why worry about anything when the rapture will be here any day now attitude prevalent among the religious faithful is also frequently seen among the singularity faithful.

As the dinosaurs and millions of other extinct species on just our single planet vividly illustrate, in this Cosmos any species that fails to get smart enough, fast enough, will wind up going extinct.

Fail to anticipate an asteroid impact or a super volcano eruptions that turns your planet into a giant ice ball. Don't realize that a mega solar flare or a gamma ray burst is capable of toasting the surface of your planet to snuff out all life. Fail to prepare for the day when a perfect human pathogen is engineered and released into the wild by some rouge microbiologist. Do any of these things or many others and only fossils will remain to mark the passing of your species. Failure to get smart enough to anticipate and develop the scientific tools necessary to cope with events like these is a death sentence for entire species in our Cosmos. You can even think of our Cosmos as an intelligence generation engine. Because the only way to survive long term in this Cosmos is to get much smarter and develop much more capable technologies than humans currently possess.

The only way that intelligent creatures descended from us are going to still exist a billion years from now is for us to get more of our best minds pulling on the oars of scientific discovery to get humanity's boat moving at top speed.

Unthinkable numbers of human beings have died down through history in squabbles over who's creator is the true creator of our Cosmos. Real data on how the Cosmos got here is way too sketchy to be sure of any answer to this question. An early pioneer in artificial intelligence loved to upset his academic colleagues by pointing our that since science is becoming all about creating better and better computer simulations. Billions upon trillions of perfect simulations of our current reality will get created by future graduate students. Thus, since for every actual reality there will be trillions of simulations, the creator of our particular Cosmos is almost certainly a graduate student.

So until we have much more evidence, opinions will vary. But there are things we do know. We know that all down through human history dogmas have brought violent conflict, death and destruction. This although, you can see at a glance that the most successful lives are never about slavish adherence to dogmas. They are all about constantly rethinking, refining and adjusting your techniques to better meet the opportunities and challenges ahead. If there is a creator's mind to be glimpsed, unraveling the mysteries all around us is where it can be found.

It isn't preachers who spend their lives studying every nuance of ancient dogma from Bronze Age books that have made the discovers giving us the technological tools that have improved our health, extended our lives, kept us warm and dry on cold, wet nights and made our labors less grueling and more productive. These things have come to us from those who spend their time systematically studying, with open minds, the true nature of the world all around us. Theirs is the real ecstasy of rapture, when they foster a new breakthroughs necessary to stave off our extinction and allow our progeny to spread outward to the stars.

7/24/2009 PERMALINK

Recycled living pod steals the show at Dwell on Design

The smash hit at the recent Dwell on Design show in Los Angeles was the newest prefab living pod model from the innovative builders at Reclaimed Space. The 400 square foot home was, apart from wiring and plumbing, built almost entirely of locally sourced recovered materials.

7/24/2009 PERMALINK

A faster, vertical takeoff replacement for Predator aerial attack bot

Recently we told you about the Air Force's new WOMO (Weapons of Mass Oppression) system that can rain pain from sky using a microwave pain infliction system. Now Aurora Flight Sciences Excalibur experimental vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft may offer the perfect bot to carry that system to keep restive urban populations under control. The 13ft-long UAV is powered by a tilting jet engine and three battery-powered lift fans. The aircraft made its first hover flight at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in June.

7/24/2009 PERMALINK

Why is it that your dog can still get better medical care than your children?

FDA regulators more concerned with keeping their careers on the fast track. Than making sure life saving medical breakthroughs are fast tracked are to blame. They would rather let 50 people die from lack of effective new treatments, rather than let one person get ill from taking any newly approved drug. The problem is that no one blames them for the 50 deaths due to their dragging their feet, but Congressional politicos will jump all over them should a constituent get sick from taking a new drug, potentially putting their careers at risk. Speaking about the amazing cures stem cells have made possible in dogs and horses, Hubert Kim, who directs the Cartilage Repair & Regeneration Center at the University of California, San Francisco said, "The results in animals provide an exciting look forward into what human therapies might look like." That is if the FDA (For Dead Americans) ever approves them. It isn't like they can't move much more quickly. Indeed, when the Gay community started following them around and picketing them at their homes. Then they quickly found a way to fast track all new HIV drugs. This bureaucratic holocaust that brings pain, misery and an early death to tens of thousands of people annually, will only end when Americans start blaming FDA regulators for the misery and deaths their ridiculously long approval process causes.

7/24/2009 PERMALINK

Caspase-8 cause cancer cells to proliferate and invade surrounding tissues

Scientists at Burnham Institute for Medical Research have found that the Caspase-8 protein, long known to play a major role in promoting programmed cell death (apoptosis), helps relay signals that cause cancer cells to proliferate, migrate and invade surrounding tissues.

7/24/2009 PERMALINK

So where is this crazy economy going next?

If you troll around a few economics sites and take in all the charts like the one above. You are struck by the unprecedented massiveness of the government's efforts to inflate another bubble and the unprecedented meagerness of the results of those efforts. After the tremendous shock to the world's economy of the 9/11 attacks, a stimulus of only a few percent of this current round was sufficient to inflate another large Keynesian inflation/credit expansion bubble, but this time around nothing quite seems to be enough to do it.

America's politicos have done their usual Keynesian stimulus thing to the max, injecting a simply mindbogglingly amount of money, credit and government guarantees. And all it appears to have achieved is a modest bubble in the stock market and a slight decline in the downward slope of unemployment increase and home price declines. Some negative metrics, like commercial real estate price declines, appear to have ignored the stimulus completely and continued getting worse throughout the entire stimulus.

Austrian school economists have speculated that the Keynesian inflation/credit bubble economy would finally run out of steam some day, when government and consumer debt loads became unsustainable. And the way the metrics are responding to the efforts of our politicos to inflate a new bubble make it seem likely we have reached some sort of inflection point. So what happens after a bubble economy runs out of steam? Will we face years of stagnation working off our tremendous debt loads before growth can finally resume or will the current massive monetary expansion send us into hyperinflation? Either could happen.

7/24/2009 PERMALINK

Researchers work to create programmable matter

Work at MIT and Carnegie Mellon is pointing towards the next revolution in computers and manufacturing: programmable matter. The research is focused on creating the basic modular building block of claytronics known as the claytronic atom or catom, and designing and writing robust and reliable software programs that will manage the shaping of ensembles of millions of catoms into dynamic, 3-Dimensional forms.

7/24/2009 PERMALINK

Ordinary mouse cells can be reprogrammed to grow an entire mouse

Dr. Shaorong Gao and colleagues from the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Beijing, China, report a breakthrough in the reprogrammed of induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs. They have demonstration that mouse iPSCs can pass the most stringent test of true pluripotency, termed "tetraploid complementation," which uses a hybrid embryo method to generate mice entirely comprised of reprogrammed cells. "Although these findings are an important proof of principle," said Dr. Gao. "It would be premature to make claims about whether iPSCs in general are functionally equivalent to normal embryonic stem cells (ESCs)."

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Toyota's new running bot able to make Honda's ASIMO eat its dust

Sorry ASIMO, as happens with every human racer, eventually a younger upstart will come along and make you eat dust.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Bcl6 gene implicated as cause of auto-immune diseases

Expression of a single gene programs an immune system helper T cell that fuels rapid growth and diversification of antibodies in a cellular structure implicated in autoimmune diseases and development of B cell lymphoma, scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reported. The gene is Bcl6, which the team found plays the crucial role in differentiating a naive T cell into a T follicular helper cell (Tfh). "Tfh cells were first noticed in structures called germinal centers found in the lymphoid system - in lymph nodes and the spleen," said senior author Chen Dong, Ph.D., professor in M. D. Anderson's Department of Immunology. Germinal centers are powerful machines that churn out lots of antibodies.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Growth factor neuregulin1 (NRG1) can regenerate damaged hearts

Researchers have devised a method to coax heart muscle cells into reentering the cell cycle, allowing the differentiated adult cells to divide and regenerate healthy heart tissue after a heart attack. The key ingredient is a growth factor known as neuregulin1 (NRG1 for short), and the researchers suggest that the factor might one day be used to treat failing human hearts. "To my knowledge, this is the first regenerative therapy that may be applicable in a systemic way," said Bernhard Kühn of Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School. For instance, he added, people might one day go to the clinic for daily infusions of NRG1 over a period of weeks. "In principle, there is nothing to preclude this going into the clinic.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Visual and auditory cues for the same abstract concept converge into the firing of exactly the same few neurons

For the first time, scientists studying the brain have worked out how words paint concepts in our minds. "Different pictures of Marilyn Monroe can evoke the same mental image, even if greatly modified as in Warhol's famous portraits," explains Professor Rodrigo Quian Quiroga, head of Bioengineering at the University of Leicester. "This process relates to one of the most fascinating questions in neuroscience: how do neurons in the brain manage to abstract and disregard irrelevant details to recognize highly variable pictures as the same person?" Our study found that although processing of visual and auditory information occur along completely separate pathways, the visual and auditory processing routes converge to end up firing exactly the same neurons. "These results demonstrate that single neurons can encode concepts in a very abstract way, even if evoked by different sensory modalities," said Prof. Quiroga.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Leukemia cells evade immune system by mimicking normal cells

Human leukemia stem cells escape detection by co-opting a protective molecular badge used by normal blood stem cells to migrate safely within the body, according to a pair of studies by researchers at Stanford University Medical School. "We call it the 'Don't eat me signal,'" said Ravindra Majeti, MD, PhD, assistant professor of hematology at the medical school.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Short term stress can boost memory, but chronic stress impairs it

While chronic stress has a detrimental effect on learning and health, a short stressful incident can actually enhance learning and memory. Researchers at the University at Buffalo have shown, in trials using rodents as an animal model, that acute stress can produce a beneficial effect on learning and memory, through the effect of the stress hormone corticosterone (cortisol in humans) on the brain's prefrontal cortex, a key region that controls learning and emotion. "Stress hormones have both protective and damaging effects on the body," said Zhen Yan, professor of physiology and biophysics at UB and senior author on the study.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

New MIT electric car to offer performance rivaling gas models

Inside a plain-looking garage on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's campus, a team is build an all-electric car to match or exceed the performance capabilities of gasoline cars. MIT's car will have a top speed of about 161 kph, a family sedan's capacity, a range of about 320 kilometers with batteries that can be recharged in about 10 minutes. They hope to complete the project, which they chronicle on their blog, by the third quarter of 2010.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Can new developments in neuroscience allow people's minds to be read?

Some researchers claim that a brain imaging technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be used to reveal hidden thoughts, such as lies, truths or deep desires. New research by neuroscientists at UCLA and Rutgers University provides evidence that while fMRI can be used in certain circumstances to determine what a person is thinking, highly accurate fMRI "mind reading" is still far from reality.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Is Google's new open source Wave bot destine to put the final nail in Microsoft's coffin?

Wave, demonstrated by Google at its I/O developer conference in May of this year, allows customers to create a customizable communications and collaboration tool without any software other than an Internet browser. As such, Google's Wave poses a significant threat to the business models of Microsoft and other applications vendors.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Air Force's new WOMO (Weapons of Mass Oppression) can rain pain from sky

The Pentagon's enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control Weapons of Mass Oppression (WOMO) appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft. The device is an extension of its controversial Active Denial System, which uses microwaves to heat the surface of the skin, creating a painful sensation without burning that strongly motivates the target to flee. The ADS was unveiled in 2001, but it has not been deployed owing to legal issues and safety fears.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

An artificial human brain within 10 years -- we don't need no stinking singularity

For the last 30 years, researchers have been coming out of their labs and claiming that they will be able to build a human-equivalent artificial intelligence within ten years. Typically, whenever this claim is made, that project falls apart a short while later.

The latest 10-year claimant is Henry Markram, director of the Blue Brain Project, who says that he will be able to model the human brain artificially within ten years. Professor Markram and his team have picked apart the structure of the neocortical column and they are now using IBM's Blue Gene Machine supercomputer with 10,000 processors to model a human brain.

While all those reaching for the brass ring have fallen off their horses in the past, other more practical researchers have been busy learning how to effectively use and extend the capabilities of limited function smart bots. The results of these efforts have been powerful and profitable cognition-extending engines like Google.

While some await the emergence of an AI God from a mythical singularity. Other are building and utilizing limited-function smart bots to do the research necessary to greatly extend our own minds and lifespans and develop the technologies necessary to spread our kind across the Cosmos.

The handful of practical, functional smart bots running on my netbook are worth far more to me than all the mythological AIs out in some nebulous singularity. We don't need an AI singularity. Just continuing to incrementally improve the capabilities of the smart bots we are all using now, will eventually take us to the stars.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Some blood pressure drugs appear to help protect against dementia

A particular class of medication used to treat high blood pressure could protect older adults against memory decline and other impairments in cognitive function, according to a newly published study from Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Their research suggests that some angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors, known as "centrally-acting" because they can cross the blood-brain barrier (a specialized system of tiny blood vessels that protects the brain from harmful substances in the blood stream) appear to protect against dementia by reducing inflammation in the brain.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

Self-assembling superhigh resolution nano-lens

Korean researchers have created nanoscale lenses with superhigh resolution using a novel self-assembly method. So far, they've demonstrated that the tiny lenses can be used for ultraviolet lithography, for imaging objects too tiny for conventional lenses, and for capturing individual photons from a light-emitting nanostructure called a quantum dot.

7/23/2009 PERMALINK

The 'see food' diet -- Omega-3 found to maintain vision as you age

A diet high in omega-3 fatty acids has been found to protect against a variety of diseases including atherosclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. Retrospective studies have suggested that diets high in fish oil or omega-3 fatty acids may also contribute to protection against Age-related macular degeneration (AMD). A group led by Dr. Chi-Chao Chan at the National Eye Institute in Bethesda, MD examined the direct effect of omega-3 fatty acids on a mouse model of AMD. A diet with high levels of omega-3 fatty acids resulted in slower lesion progression, with improvement in some lesions. These mice had lower levels of inflammatory molecules and higher levels of anti-inflammatory molecules, which may explain this protective effect.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Could the popular theory that reactive oxygen causes aging be wrong?

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are ions or very small molecules that include oxygen ions, free radicals, and peroxide. A popular theory of aging maintains that ROS damage cells in ways that cause aging and disease. So a defective mitochondrial protein called MCLK1 that produce elevated amounts of reactive oxygen in mice when young should spell disaster for longevity. Yet, according to a new study, these mice actually age at a slower rate and live longer than normal mice.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

XIAP is critical link in cell death pathway

Programmed cell death (also called apoptosis) removes unwanted and dangerous cells from our bodies, protecting us against cancer development and diseases where the immune system attacks the body's own tissues, such as in insulin-dependent diabetes. Now a team led by Professor Andreas Strasser from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute has found that XIAP (X-chromosome-linked inhibitor of apoptosis protein) is a critical factor in programmed cell death that determines which of two pathways will be followed to culminate in a cell's death.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Modding mice to remove cell receptor that virus uses to infect, prevents infection

New research from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia sheds light on the role of cell receptors in acting as gatekeepers for infectious viruses. By using mice genetically engineered to lack a particular receptor in heart and pancreas cells, the study team prevented infection by a common virus that causes potentially serious diseases in humans.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Your genes effect what you want to eat and your susceptibility to obesity

An international team of researchers has found a connection between a variation in a gene active in the central nervous system (CNS) and an increased risk for obesity. People who have inherited the gene variant neurexin 3 (NRXN3) have a 10% to 15% increased chance of being obese versus people who do not have the variant.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Brain develops motor memory for prosthetics or bot remotes as easily as it learns to ride a bicycle

"Practice makes perfect" is the maxim drummed into students struggling to learn to ride a bike or develop a killer backhand in tennis. Research now reveals that the brain can just as easily achieve motor memory over a prosthetic or robotic device. Mastering control of artificial limbs or remote devices with the same ease as a kid on a bicycle. "When your own body performs motor tasks repeatedly, the movements become almost automatic," said study principal investigator Jose Carmena, a UC Berkeley assistant professor. "We have demonstrated that the brain is able to form a motor memory to control a disembodied device in a way that mirrors how it controls its own body."

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Using the common cold virus to deliver corrected genes to lung cells

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine scientists have found a new, far more efficient way to deliver a corrected gene to lung cells. Using parainfluenza virus, one of the viruses that causes common colds, the UNC scientists found that delivery of a corrected version of the CFTR gene to 25 percent of cells grown in a tissue culture model that resembles the lining of the human airways was sufficient to restore normal function back to the tissue. "This is the first demonstration in which we've been able to execute delivery in an efficient manner," said Professor Ray Pickles. "When you consider that in past gene therapy studies, the targeting efficiency has been somewhere around 0.1 percent of cells, you can see this is a giant leap forward."

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Stopping to smell the flowers really does alter gene activity to soothe stress

Feeling stressed? Then try savoring the scent of lemon, mango, lavender, or other fragrant plants. Scientists in Japan are reporting the first scientific evidence that inhaling certain fragrances alter gene activity and blood chemistry in ways that can reduce stress levels.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Could a 100km high nano-pier reaching from earth into space make space-based solar power practical?

To make space travel truly practical we need to stop relying on expensive ground to space rockets. Nano-tech be used to build a 100km high pier that allows a spacecraft to take off and land from above our atmosphere, much as boat piers reach from the shore out into water deep enough to float a boat.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

More evidence both humans and animals easily map neurally-controlled bots as body extensions

A new study of neural prostheses in monkeys suggests that learning to control a robotic arm with the power of thought may happen more naturally than scientists had expected. Jose Carmena and Karunesh Ganguly at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), found that the animals create a mental map of the device, much as we do when learning to swim or swing a tennis racket.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Watching motor molecules using random walks to make deliveries inside a living cell

Cells rely on tiny molecular motors to deliver cargo, such as mRNA and organelles, within the cell. The critical nature of this transport system is evidenced by the fact that disruption of motors by genetic defects leads to fatal diseases in humans. Investigators have previously isolated these motor to study their function in a controlled environment outside the cell, but now making use of incredibly tiny, glowing quantum dots researchers can track the miniscule motions of myosin V in living cells. Myosin V is a motor molecule that walks in a fashion similar to humans by stepping along actin filament tracks that are assembled in a dense, criss-crossing network inside the cell. A critical feature of these motors is their ability to walk long distances without falling off their tracks. Sophisticated microscopes and sensitive cameras were used to track the 72 nanometer strides (equivalent to 1 millionth of an inch) taken by these motors inside the cells.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Why big oil is investing big time in tiny little algae plants

By the barrel, algae fuel provides three to four units of energy for every unit used to make it -- a ratio that approaches petroleum's 5-to-1 level of efficiency. The ratio for making ethanol from corn is a mere 1.2 to 1, according to some studies. Even making ethanol from cellulosic plants like switchgrass, researchers can achieve only a 2.5 to 1 ratio. This efficiency has lead ExxonMobil to invest $300 million over five to six years in Synthetic Biology, which is Craig Venter's new company using synthetic biology to fashion a sustainable future.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Dye-doped DNA nano-fibers can be tuned to emit different colors of light

By adding fluorescent dyes to DNA and then spinning the DNA strands into nano-fibers, researchers at the University of Connecticut have made a new material that emits bright white light. The material absorbs energy from ultraviolet light and gives off different colors of light--from blue to orange to white--depending on the proportions of dye it contains.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Peptide linked to dementia prevention and life extension

A cellular protein that may prevent nerve cells from dying also helps to improve insulin action and lower blood glucose levels. The infused of humanin into the brains of diabetic rats significantly improved overall insulin sensitivity, both in the liver and in skeletal muscle. A single treatment with a highly-potent form of humanin significantly lowered blood-sugar levels in diabetic rats. "The improvement in insulin sensitivity caused by centrally administered humanin may be one of the main mechanisms through which humanin regulates cell survival," says Dr. Nir Barzilai. "This may provide another potential mechanism by which humanin protects against Alzheimer's disease. We conclude that the decline in humanin with age could help explain why Alzheimer's disease and type 2 diabetes are more common in older people."

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Skin-like tissue developed from human embryonic stem cells

Dental and tissue engineering researchers at Tufts University have harnessed the pluripotency of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) to generate complex, multilayer tissues that mimic human skin and the oral mucosa (the moist tissue that lines the inside of the mouth). The proof-of-concept study is published online in advance of print in Tissue Engineering Part A. "For the first time, we have established that a single source of hESC can provide the multiple cell types needed to interact within a three-dimensional tissue model to generate complex, multilayer tissues. We are a step closer to a practical therapy to help with diseases of the skin and mouth," said Professor Jonathan Garlick.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Jupiter pummeled leaving bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean

Something slammed into Jupiter in the last few days, creating a dark bruise about the size of the Pacific Ocean. The bruise was noticed by an amateur astronomer on Sunday, July 19. University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Paul Kalas took advantage of previously scheduled observing time on the Keck II telescope in Hawaii to image the blemish in the early morning hours of Monday, July 20. The near infrared image showed a bright spot in Jupiter's southern hemisphere, where the impact had propelled reflective particles high into the relatively clear stratosphere. The price for failing to spread our kind across multiple star systems quickly enough is the loss of millions of future generations of our kind due to our extinction.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Evidence found that a comet struck in North America approximately 12,900 years ago

Nanosized diamonds found just a few meters below the surface of Santa Rosa Island off the coast of Santa Barbara provide strong evidence of a cosmic impact event in North America approximately 12,900 years ago, according to a new study by scientists. Their hypothesis holds that fragments of a comet struck across North America at that time. The price for failing to spread our kind across multiple star systems quickly enough is the loss of millions of future generations of our kind due to our extinction.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Six lifestyle factors can reduce risk of high blood pressure by 80%

Both men and women who exercised regularly, drank moderately, did not smoke, who were not overweight and had a diet that included cereal and fruits and vegetables had a lower lifetime risk of heart failure. The researchers found that normal body weight, never smoking, regular exercise, moderate alcohol intake, and consumption of breakfast cereal and fruits and vegetables were individually associated with a lower lifetime risk of heart failure compared to a corresponding undesirable behavior. There was an inverse and graded association between the number of healthy lifestyle factors and lifetime risk of heart failure. "For example, the lifetime risk for heart failure was approximately 1 in 5 (21.2 percent) in men adhering to none of the desirable lifestyle factors, compared to 1 in 10 (10.1 percent) in those adhering to 4 or more healthy lifestyle factors," the authors write. For women who had all 6 low-risk factors (0.3 percent of the population), they had about an 80 percent lower risk of developing high blood pressure.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

New prenatal screening could eradicate genetic disease and even replace natural conception

Genetic birth defect screening is about to get faster, cheaper, and more comprehensive - all at once. A new technique could soon make genetic defects a thing of the past and replace natural conception altogether. For years, preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) has allowed couples to ensure the health of their child. But a new screening technique called karyomapping will allow doctors to detect both chromosomal abnormalities and single gene defects with a single test, making it a near-universal embryo screening. The technique should go into regular use by the end of the year.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

This article will self-destruct after you have read it

Until now, computers have made it virtually impossible to leave the past behind. College Facebook posts or pictures can resurface during a job interview. A lost cell phone can expose personal photos or text messages. A legal investigation can subpoena the entire contents of a home or work computer, uncovering incriminating, inconvenient or just embarrassing details from the past. The University of Washington has developed a way to make cloud information expire after a set time period. Not even the sender can retrieve them. "If you care about privacy, the Internet today is a very scary place," said UW computer scientist Tadayoshi Kohno. The team of UW computer scientists developed a prototype system called Vanish that can place a time limit on text uploaded to any Web service through a Web browser. After a set time text written using Vanish will, in essence, self-destruct.

7/22/2009 PERMALINK

Studying the masters of regeneration - able to form an entire new animal from any small part

Flatworms are masters of regeneration and an ideal model organism for researchers to investigate stem cells and their regulation. Research suggests that the regeneration of the flatworm involves hundreds of genes. But how are these genes regulated? With the latest technologies researchers search for molecules which regulate genes, such as the small RNAs and especially microRNAs (miRNAs).

7/21/2009 PERMALINK

Why are revolutionary no-painful-recovery focused ultrasound brain, pancreas and liver operations still so unavailable in America?

A new ultrasound device, used in conjunction with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), allows neurosurgeons to precisely burn out small pieces of malfunctioning brain tissue without cutting the skin or opening the skull. Watch an animation of how it works. A preliminary study from Switzerland involving nine patients with chronic pain shows that the technology can be used safely in humans. The researchers now aim to test it in patients with other disorders, such as Parkinson's disease. "The groundbreaking finding here is that you can make lesions deep in the brain--through the intact skull and skin--with extreme precision and accuracy and safety," says Neal Kassell, a neurosurgeon at the University of Virginia. Kassell, who was not directly involved in the study, is chairman of the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation, a nonprofit based in Charlottesville, VA, that was founded to develop new applications for focused ultrasound.

We have been watching ultrasound surgery successful used abroad for years now. It was invented in China, where it has now been used thousands of times to destroy cancers in solid tissue organs like the pancreas and liver that are still considered inoperable in America. Any tumor that can be imaged with ultrasound - those in solid organs, not those with voids like the lung - can typically be destroyed with China's breakthrough ultrasound surgery. It works by heating up the tumor with focused ultrasound energy, just enough to kill it without effecting surrounding healthy tissues. The dead tumors are simply absorbed by the body, so that no incision is required and all the traumas of these formerly very painful and difficult surgeries are completely avoided. The patient can go right home after surgery, experience no painful recovery period at all.

This is a surgical breakthrough of revolutionary proportions, but even after many years of successful tumor cures abroad, its use remains almost non-existent in America. Luddite regulatory approval bureaucracies, which routinely kill 50 patients by delaying breakthroughs like this one for every life saved by keeping a bad drug off the market, keep it unavailable here.

The problem is that bureaucrats know they won't get blamed for the tens of thousands of needless pancreatic, liver and brain cancer deaths caused by their malfeasance, but they will get blamed if they let through even one new medical procedure or drug that kills someone. Sadly, the type of people attracted to government regulatory jobs, appear to care much less about fast tracking approvals that can obviously save the lives of thousands of dying patients, than they do about keeping their own bureaucratic careers on the fast track.

The only way to speed up these bureaucratic murders is to organize and attack them directly, as the Gay Community successfully did to get HIV drugs fast tracked, saving millions that would have died needlessly otherwise.

Until something like this happens, the only hope a patient has is seeking treatment in a more humane country like China. While China's bureaucracy is just as draconian as any in the west in areas like spying on their own citizens, at least they have the humanity necessary to prevent their bureaucrats from denying cures to their dying citizens.

7/21/2009 PERMALINK

How children's brain signaling differs from adults

The first-ever comparison of synchronization of brain signals in children and young adults helps explain why children are less adept at multitasking, emotion regulation and other behaviors that come with maturity, according to researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

7/21/2009 PERMALINK

Using neural stem cells to cure dementia

Frank LaFerla, Mathew Blurton-Jones and colleagues at UC Irvine have found that neural stem cells could be a potential treatment for advanced Alzheimer's disease. The UC Irvine scientists have shown for the first time that neural stem cells can rescue memory in mice with advanced Alzheimer's disease, raising hopes of a treatment for the leading cause of elderly dementia that afflicts 5.3 million people in the U.S.

7/21/2009 PERMALINK

Reducing levels of a key enzyme in the brain decreased appetites and increased energy levels

In a major advance in obesity and diabetes research, Yale School of Medicine scientists have found that reducing levels of a key enzyme in the brain decreased appetites and increased energy levels. Reductions in the levels of the enzyme prolylcarboxypeptidase (PRCP) led to weight loss and a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes in mice. The team found that PRCP is located in the hypothalamus and regulates levels of the alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone (alpha-MSH), which is a peptide known for inhibiting food intake and stimulating energy expenditure. Researchers found that blocking the PRCP enzyme keeps the alpha-MSH peptides from being degraded, resulting in higher levels of alpha-MSH and decreased appetite.

7/21/2009 PERMALINK

Biomedical engineering students embed stem cells in sutures to enhance healing

Johns Hopkins biomedical engineering students have demonstrated a practical way to embed a patient's own adult stem cells in the surgical thread that doctors use to repair serious orthopedic injuries such as ruptured tendons. The goal, the students said, is to enhance healing and reduce the likelihood of re-injury without changing the surgical procedure itself.

7/21/2009 PERMALINK

Scientists present first genetic evidence for why placebos work

For some individuals, a sugar pill or placebo works nearly as well as actual medication. Why that is so, and why they work at all, has been a mystery. Because the chemical signaling done by monoamines is under strong genetic control, UCLA scientists believe that common genetic variations between individuals called genetic polymorphisms are what is responsible for the differences in the strength of the placebo response.

7/21/2009 PERMALINK

Suppressing the "suicide mechanism" of cells hit by radiation and enabling their recovery

Our species will go extinct with millions of generations still unborn, unless we develop the capabilities to spread our kind to other star systems. To achieve this migration we must learn how to survive radiation exposure. Dr. Andrei Gudkov has now developed medication that suppresses the "suicide mechanism" of cells hit by radiation, while enabling them to recover from the radiation-induced damages that prompted them to activate the suicide mechanism in the first place.

7/20/2009 PERMALINK

Mayo Clinic study shows induced pluripotent stem cells repair heart

In a proof-of-concept study, Mayo Clinic investigators have demonstrated that induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be used to treat heart disease. iPS cells are stem cells converted from adult cells. In this study, the researchers reprogrammed ordinary fibroblasts, cells that contribute to scars such as those resulting from a heart attack, converting them into stem cells that fix heart damage caused by infarction. "This study establishes the real potential for using iPS cells in cardiac treatment," says Timothy Nelson, M.D., Ph.D., first author on the Mayo Clinic study. "Bioengineered fibroblasts acquired the capacity to repair and regenerate infarcted hearts." This is the first application of iPS-based technology for heart disease therapy.

7/20/2009 PERMALINK

Blue zones - the places in the world where people live longer and stay healthier

They are called blue zones - places in the world where people live longer and healthier than anywhere else on earth. Several of these blue zones exist, and in each of these places people living to 90 or even 100 years is common. And they aren't just living long either - these people are living healthy - without medication or disability.

7/20/2009 PERMALINK

Genetic toggle switch discovery brings diabetes cure closer

Scientists have identified a master regulator gene for early embryonic development of the pancreas and other organs, putting researchers closer to coaxing stem cells into pancreatic cells as a possible cure for type1 diabetes. We show that Sox17 acts like a toggle or binary switch that sets off a cascade of genetic events, said Dr. Wells. In normal embryonic development, when you have an undecided cell, if Sox17 goes one way the cell becomes part of the biliary system. If it goes the other way, the cell becomes part of the pancreas. In the image, James Wells, Ph.D., of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center is shown with a microscopic image of fluoresced cells separating during normal embryonic development into a pancreas (green cells above) and the biliary system below.

7/20/2009 PERMALINK

Turning off a signaling pathway that causing numerous diseases including cancer

A UCLA study has identified a way to turn off a key signaling pathway involved in physiological processes that can also stimulate the development of cancer and other diseases. By activating a receptor in cells called the liver X receptor (LXR), scientists were able to inhibit the hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway, which is involved in the maintenance of tissue integrity and stem cell generation. When stimulated in an unregulated manner, however, the Hh pathway can also cause numerous diseases including cancers of the brain, lung, blood, prostate, skin and other tissues.

7/20/2009 PERMALINK

Breakthrough genetic alteration technique found by plant geneticists

Research led by scientists at Iowa State University's Plant Sciences Institute has resulted in a process that will make genetic changes in plant genes much more efficient, practical and safe. The breakthrough developed by David Wright and Jeffery Townsend harnesses a natural process called homologous recombination to precisely introduce DNA at a predetermined location in the plant genome through targeted DNA breaks generated by zinc finger nucleases. Until now, scientists would randomly inject DNA into the plant cell, with no way of knowing if it was in the right place or if it would work until many resulting plants were tested.

7/20/2009 PERMALINK

Large human study of diet's effect on dementia risk: fish = positive effect, red meat = no effect

Recently, there has been growing interest in whether consumption of oily fish might influence the onset and/or severity of dementia. Oily fish are rich in omega-3 long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which some studies suggest are positively related to cognitive function in later life. Data from 14,960 participants showed that increased fish consumption is associated with lower dementia prevalence in later life. Some studies have suggested that red meat consumption may negatively impacted onset of dementia, so researchers also looked for this effect, but found no evidence of it.

7/20/2009 PERMALINK

Two copies of APOE e4 gene may cause early onset of dementia

A new Mayo Clinic-led study published in the July 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine suggests that the carriers of a common genetic risk factor for Alzheimer's disease begin to have memory declines in their mid-50s, far earlier than previously thought. The study, which followed participants for up to 14 years, used sensitive memory and thinking tests to detect, track and compare cognitive performance in 815 healthy people, 21 to 97 years of age, with two copies, one copy and no copies of the APOE e4 gene, the major genetic risk factor for developing Alzheimer's disease at older ages. Each additional copy of this gene is associated with a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease and a slightly younger age at the onset of clinically significant memory and thinking problems.

7/20/2009 PERMALINK

Low-cost video cameras capable of doing remote "intimate" body-searches

New terahertz detecting technology could make "intimate" body-search-at-a-distance cameras as cheap and easy as ordinary surveillance video. Terahertz radiation fits into the electromagnetic spectrum between the infrared and microwaves and passes through most types of clothing allowing "intimate" body searches at a distance. THis technology could also have some legitimate uses, such as more easily spotting tumors beneath the skin.

7/20/2009 PERMALINK

Faster, better control of bot grippers and human prostheses

A team at Columbia University has achieved a breakthrough in bot gripper control that will also improve human prostheses. Prof. Peter Allen director of Columbia's Robotics Group, and colleague Matei Ciocarlie realized that while human hands have about 20 degrees of freedom (20 joints that can each bend), each joint is not capable of moving completely independently; instead, its movements are linked to those of other joints by muscles or nerves. Traditionally, the software used to control a complex robot hand has tried to account for all the degrees of freedom in the robotic hand's joints, but this is computationally cumbersome and slows the robot down. So, Allen and Ciocarlie decided to limit the movement of a robot hand in the same way a human hand is limited and achieved much faster, more efficient algorithms without no loss of functionality.

7/20/2009 PERMALINK

Bug-machine hybrids

Ryohei Kanzaki, a professor at Tokyo University's Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology, has studied insect brains for three decades and become a pioneer in the field of bug-brain controlled machines. "We want to design a machine which is far more powerful than the living body, says Professor Kanzaki."

7/19/2009 PERMALINK

Wearware that monitor heart, breathing and body temp is about to revolutionize health care

Comfortable smart clothes that monitor the wearer's health are about to revolutionize health care by reducing hospital visits and allowing patients to lead more active lives. "By embedding the sensors in a vest that patients feel comfortable wearing, and requiring only a mobile phone-sized device to gather and transmit the information, the system empowers patients to be more active and independent while letting caregivers check on them at anytime or in any place as necessary," said Theodore Vontetsianos, the head of the e-Health Unit at Sotiria General Chest Diseases Hospital in Athens, Greece.

7/19/2009 PERMALINK

Implantable miniature eye-lens telescope enhances vision 3X

VisionCare's Implantable Miniature Telescope, currently in Phase II/III clinical trials, is designed to improve vision and quality of life for individuals with moderate to profound vision loss caused by dysfunction of the macula. The macula is a small specialized area at the center of the retina that is responsible for detailed central vision. The implant permanently restores the ability to perform everyday activities, like recognizing people, reading mail, and watching television.

7/18/2009 PERMALINK

The fancier your cortex, the smarter your are

Why are some people smarter than others? Eduardo Mercado III of the University at Buffalo says cognitive plasticity, the capacity to learn and improve cognitive skills such as solving problems and remembering events, is determined by the extent of your brain's cortex. Cortical modules are vertical columns of interconnected neuronal cells. Across different areas of the cerebral cortex, these columns vary in the number and diversity of neurons they contain. Studies examining a number of different species have shown that, on average, a larger cortex predicts greater intellectual capacity.

7/18/2009 PERMALINK

iHOBO a hobo's RES for your iPhone?

During the Great Depression hobos developed signs they could chalk on a wall, street, telephone pole or sidewalk to inform their peers about opportunities or dangers. "This house will feed you." "Beware the dog." Wired has a spoof piece about the new RES (Reality Enhancement System) iHOBO for hobos with iPhone. It is funny and probably also prophetic. Because I suspect that once RES databases for every location are available. A reality augmented by RES will be the one indispensable tool for anyone living a nomadic lifestyle.

7/17/2009 PERMALINK

Evolving sentient bot companions for kids

Watch Zeno, the first platform for evolving sentient bot companions for kids from Hanson Robotics.

7/17/2009 PERMALINK

Genetic trigger for disease-fighting antibodies discovered

A research team led by the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology has identified the specific gene which triggers the body to produce disease-fighting antibodies -- a seminal finding that clarifies the exact molecular steps taken by the body to mount an antibody defense against viruses and other pathogens.

7/17/2009 PERMALINK

Researchers find that eating the fructose found in junk foods impairs your memory

Researchers at Georgia State University have found that diets high in fructose, a type of sugar found in most processed foods and beverages, impaired the spatial memory of adult rats. Researchers at Georgia State's Neuroscience Institute, fed a group of Sprague-Dawley rats a diet where fructose represented 60 percent of calories ingested during the day. Then placed the rats in a pool of water to test their ability to learn to find a submerged platform, which allowed them to get out of the water. "What we discovered is that the fructose diet doesn't affect their ability to learn," said Prof. Marise Parent. "But they can't seem to remember as well where the platform was when you take it away. They swam more randomly than rats fed a control diet."

7/17/2009 PERMALINK

Using the cloud to replace the old, obsolete academic journal system

The myExperiment Virtual Research Environment is an attempt to replace the old, obsolete academic journals for sharing research breakthroughs with a 21st century cloud-based social networking site for scientists. myExperiment enables scientists to share digital Research Objects associated with their research. Rearch Objects contain everything needed to understand and reuse a piece of research, including workflows, data, research outputs and provenance information.

7/17/2009 PERMALINK

Dietary supplement may help prevent, treat cataracts

Researchers are reporting new evidence that the popular dietary supplement carnosine, may help prevent and treat cataracts. The image shows a magnified image of a cataract.

7/17/2009 PERMALINK

Gene regulates immune cells' ability to cause immune diseases like arthritis

A recently identified gene, called Batf, allows immune cells to start the self-destructive processes thought to underlie autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS) and rheumatoid arthritis, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found. Mice without the gene lacked a type of inflammatory immune cell and were resistant to a procedure that normally induces an autoimmune condition similar to human MS. Lead author Barbara Schraml, Ph.D., found that the loss of Batf affected immune cells known as T cells. Normally T cells take on specialized roles, becoming cells that promote various defensive responses or that recruit inflammatory cells to sites of infection. In mice without Batf, though, one of those roles was blocked: the mice had no inflammatory Th17 cells.

7/16/2009 PERMALINK

Study reveals major genetic differences between blood and tissue cells

Research by a group of Montreal scientists calls into question one of the most basic assumptions of human genetics -- that when it comes to DNA, every cell in the body is essentially identical to every other cell. This discovery may undercut the rationale behind numerous large-scale genetic studies conducted over the last 15 years, studies which were supposed to isolate the causes of scores of human diseases. Except for cancer, samples of diseased tissue are difficult or even impossible to take from living patients. Thus, the vast majority of genetic samples used in large-scale studies come in the form of blood. However, if it turns out that blood and tissue cells do not match genetically, these ambitious and expensive genome-wide association studies may prove to have been essentially flawed from the outset.

7/16/2009 PERMALINK

New personal genetic testing start-up offering lowest price yet

A fourth major online genetic testing start-up, Pathway Genomics, has joined the three previous entrants: 23andme, deCodeme, and Navigenics. And the newcomer, Pathway, is offering the lowest prices yet, with ancestry testing for $199 and health markers for $249. Ordering both packages costs a discounted $348. The next cheapest product is from 23andme, which charges $399 for its Full Edition service.

But do you really want to know? What would it do to your outlook on life to know that you are predisposed to something truly awful, like Alzheimer's disease? Fortunately, a new study shows that any depression or anxiety associated with getting your bad predisposition news is not long lasting and by having that information you know to keep your eye open for gene therapies that can undo your particular disease predisposition.

7/16/2009 PERMALINK

There are now over 100 million electric bikes in China

Electric bikes are huge in China, the number on the streets just passed the 100 million mark. They are so popular because, unlike the electric bikes sold here that can set you back $5,000 to $10,000, China's typical electric bike cost an astonishingly low 2000 RMB (only about US$290). And what you get for that is pretty good, a 100 km range on a full charge at a speed of 12mph to 30 mph. In 2006 there were 2,700 licensed manufacturers, and countless additional smaller shops. The top manufacturer, Xinri, makes about 1.6 million of the over 23 million electric bikes sold worldwide in 2008. By the way, the Chinese bought about 90% of the world's e-bike output last year. Shown in the image is a KLD scooter with a 100 mile range and a 40mph top speed.

7/15/2009 PERMALINK

An osteoporosis drug called zoledronic acid appears to strengthen the body's immune system

An osteoporosis drug called zoledronic acid (Reclast) that has been proven to save lives after hip fractures may do so by strengthening the body's immune system, according to geriatrics researchers at Duke University Medical Center.

7/15/2009 PERMALINK

Vitamin D plus a turmeric spice called curcumin clears brain plaque deposits

UCLA scientists and colleagues from UC Riverside and the Human BioMolecular Research Institute have found that a form of vitamin D, together with a chemical found in turmeric spice called curcumin, may help stimulate the immune system to clear the amyloid beta responsible for dementia-causing brain plaque deposits.

7/15/2009 PERMALINK

BulletFlight sniper assistant bot for the iPhone figures perfect kill shot settings

An iPhone mounted inside of a protective case on an M110 semiautomatic sniper rifle running the BulletFlight bot can make detailed ballistic calculations that include the effects of windage, distance, air pressure, humidity and temperature, for perfect kill shot settings every time. Obviously a temporary technology, who needs a human to fire a rifle? The Terminator movies are looking more prescient with each new military gear press release.

7/15/2009 PERMALINK

A breakthrough towards antivirals that no flu virus can resist

Amid reports that swine flu viruses are developing the ability to shrug off existing antiviral drugs, scientists in Japan are reporting a breakthrough discovery that could bring a new genre of antivirals that sidestep the ability of the flu virus to develop resistance to antivirals. Specifically, esearchers demonstrated that pentadecapeptides that bind to a sialylgalactose structure (Neu5Ac−Gal) inhibited the infection of cells by influenza virus.

7/15/2009 PERMALINK

So what's it like to get your own stem cells harvested

Watch Daniel Kraft demo his Marrow Miner, a new device that quickly harvests life-saving bone marrow with minimal pain to the donor. Adult stem cells found in bone marrow can be used to treat many terminal conditions, from Parkinson's to heart disease.

7/14/2009 PERMALINK

Your brain can adapt to changing demands within seconds

The human brain can adapt to changing demands even in adulthood, but MIT neuroscientists have now found evidence of it changing with unsuspected speed. Their findings suggest that the brain has a network of silent connections that underlie its plasticity. "When we temporarily deprived part of the visual cortex from receiving input, subjects reported seeing squares distorted as rectangles," said senior author Nancy Kanwisher of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. "We were surprised to find these referred visual sensations happening as fast as we could measure, within two seconds." Many scientists think that this kind of reorganized response to sensory information reflects a rewiring in the brain, or a growth of new connections. "But these distortions happened too quickly to result from structural changes in the cortex," Kanwisher explained. "So we think the connections were already there but were silent, and that the brain is constantly recalibrating the connections through short-term plasticity mechanisms."

7/14/2009 PERMALINK

Why are our trusted institutions proving to be so corrupt?

"The very fabric of society is breaking down around us," said Charlie Brooker in a recent piece in a British newspaper. "What the hell is there left to believe in?" Charlie went on to observe:

It's all gone wrong," Our belief in everything has been shattered by a series of shock revelations that have shaken our core to its core. You can't move for toppling institutions. Television, the economy, the police, the House of Commons, and, most recently, the press ... all revealed to be jam-packed with liars and bastards and graspers and bullies and turds. And we knew. We knew. But we were deep in denial, like a cuckolded partner who knows the sorry truth but tries their best to ignore it. Over the last 18 months the spotlight of truth has swung this way and that, and one institution after another was suddenly exposed as being precisely as rotten as we always thought it was.

Indeed, all the old religious, political and economic institutions are looking profoundly ineffective and corrupt these days. Because the meme-sets on which they rely are fatally flawed in fundamental ways that hold back human intellectual growth and progress.

For thousands of years, ministers of religions that provide the belief system for most of the world's population have been assuring their flocks that the world will end very soon. About half of the world's Christians believe that it will end in their lifetimes. So why would they ever give a seconds thought to protecting the future of humanity? None of us have ever seen religious beliefs move the mountains they claim to be able to move, but we most assuredly have seen those beliefs bring down our skyscrapers and spawn wars that have taken uncountable number of innocent lives. And millions more lives have been lost by the postponed introduction of lifesaving technologies like blood transfusion, which Christians once opposed by claiming that something called a soul circulates around the body in your bloodstream, so transfusions would mix together souls. And their flawed meme-set keeps them from ever growing any wiser, so they are repeating the same deadly insanity today with their opposition to stem cell research.

What we need is a new open source meme-set. A new worldview that can inspire us and guide us in the building of a new set of coordination mechanisms that really can help to make our lives more comfortable and not become the cause of our own extinction.

And the stakes are really that high, avoiding extinction for our species, because if we allow religious bigotry to mix with today's powerful new bio-engineering technologies. We will find ourselves facing a 100% fatal, incredibly contagious engineered plague unleashed by the fundamentalist followers of some religious or idealogical death dogmas.

The Cloud can allow us to design cooperative mechanism that are effective and resilient enough to actually solve today's complex problems. Mechanisms that access reputation and skill set databases and channel the toughest challenges to ad hoc groups of those with the skills and experience best suited to finding a solution.

We either fix this or humanity will inevitably follow our old, failed institutions into extinction.

7/14/2009 PERMALINK

3-D brain map using 4 different image types said to revolutionize brain surgery

A new technology involving the fusion of four different types of images into a 3-D map of a patient's brain has helped University of Cincinnati (UC) specialists successfully remove a fist-sized tumor from the brain of an Indiana woman. The surgery was performed at University Hospital by an eight-member team from the Brain Tumor Center at the UC Neuroscience Institute. "This marks the culmination of one of the most important developments in brain tumor surgery in the last 100 years," says John Tew, MD, a neurosurgeon with the Mayfield Clinic, UC professor of neurosurgery and clinical director of the UC Neuroscience Institute.

7/14/2009 PERMALINK

How that cloud of tiny armed spy bots overhead, watching your protest, will be powered

That cloud of small but highly lethal attack/spy bots, designed to fly over any city and keep restive urban populations in check, will be powered by flexible dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) says the US Air Force. The choice of DSSCs is due to their better power to weight performance than other types of solar cells, a very critical spec for an aerial bot that needs to orbit overhead for hours on end. So when that food price protest you are leading in 2014 gets out of hand and the crowd trashes a fast food chain outlet. Thanks to DSSCs, those clever mesh-net aerial bots overhead will be able to track you back home and terminate you quietly by releasing a small guided probe that deposits a lethal heart attack inducing toxin onto your skin. See also: Iraq offers the perfect excuse for developing WOMO (Weapons Of Mass Oppression)