2/22/2010 PERMALINK
Your weekly Breakthrough Alert podcast begins now.

Research involving 136,474 people who were asked about their use of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), including aspirin, ibuprofen and acetaminophen has found after six years that regular users of ibuprofen were 40 percent less likely to develop Parkinson's disease than people who didn't take ibuprofen.

MIT's Flyfire project uses a swarm of miniature helicopters with LED lights to create a display screen in three dimensional space. With each bot acting as smart mobile pixel flying in close formation with the rest of the swarm. The Flyfire bots can theoretically form complex three dimensional shapes to create a digital display of virtually any size.

The history classes in government-run schools never mention this, but the Federal government once deliberately executed without trial more than 10,000 Americans in order to enforce a law inspired by religious zealotry. During the alcohol prohibition era, frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned in the 1920's and 1930's. Federal officials ordered the random poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States that were regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking by killing some of the lawbreakers, just for enjoying an illegal drink at their local speakeasy. By the time Prohibition ended in 1933, based on counts of the nightly death toll made by hospital doctors, the Feds had poisoned to death over 10,000 people in their failed effort to impose puritanical Christian zealotry on Americans. Nation states and religious zealotry are at the top of the list of the most toxic, lethal and freedom destroying memes ever invented. They are especially destructive when they join forces, as they did to bring about alcohol prohibition and as they did again in the War on Drugs, which is even today adding to the millions of lives it has destroyed.

Dr. Ijad Madisch has created a "Facebook for scientists" called ResearchGATE, which has rapidly grown to include more than 250,000 researchers in over 1,000 discipline subgroups sharing tens of thousands of new research documents annually on the site.

Scientists at the Wingate Institute in Israel have determined that a few minor variations in just one gene, NRF2, appear to make the difference in determining your athletic endurance.

Scientists have found a way to program ordinary oil droplets to function as sophisticated nano-machines that are "smart" enough to navigate through a complex maze just like a trained lab rat. The finding could have a wide range of practical applications in human regenerative therapies, scientists say.

If you'd like to screen a panel discussion on the subject of Is Aging Really Necessary?, a link is embedded in the text version of this podcast at our web site.

In an effort to sidestep the religious Luddites holding back the tremendous medical progress possible through the study of human embryonic stem cells to treat diseases. Scientists are being forced to waste their precious research time developing non-controversial alternatives. In particular, they are seeking chemical compounds that can re-program adult skin cells into the stem cells now obtained from human embryos. The ultimate goal is to be able to reprogram any cell of the body into another by means of a simple molecular kit. Medical research delays caused by the need to get around religious obstructionism has cost millions of lives over the years. It began over 100 years ago, when religious zealots held up the introduction of blood transfusions for decades. Because they thought back then that the soul flowed around in your blood stream. So mixing your blood with another might mix your soul with another. Sadly, the hoodoo of these profoundly ignorant busybodies is still killing thousands every day by holding back stem cell research.

Memories that we have just acquired, a new phone number, or the name of a new acquaintance, are more liable to be forgotten than memories we have held for some time. We know this from experience, but we are just learning about events inside and between nerve cells that account for the loss of short-term memory. Now, a neuroscience team at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory has discovered that three kinds of forgetting, all involving the erasure of short-term memory, are regulated within neurons by the activity of a protein called Rac.

Life's smallest motor, a protein called kinesin that shuttles cargo within your cells and helps your cells divide, does so by rocking up and down like a seesaw according to new high-resolution snapshots. The images, taken by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Brandeis University, are the closest look yet at the structural changes kinesin proteins undergo as they ferry molecules.

New research from the University of California, Berkeley, shows that an hour's nap can dramatically boost and restore your brain power. Indeed, the findings suggest that a biphasic sleep schedule not only refreshes the mind, but can make you smarter.

Screen the next generation of fully articulated myo-electric hands. Bebionic prosthetic hands feature naturally compliant grip patterns combining innovative technology with life-like appearance. Functions of the hand such as speed, grip force and grip patterns may be custom programmed to suit individual user requirements through smart software and wireless technology.

A 'metal foam' that has a similar elasticity to bone could mean a new generation of biomedical implants that would avoid bone rejection that often results from more rigid implant materials, such as titanium. Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed the metal foam, which is even lighter than solid aluminum and can be made of 100 percent steel or a combination of steel and aluminum.

Researchers at the University of Washington have found that watching a cursor respond to one's thoughts prompts brain signals to become stronger than those generated in day-to-day life. "Bodybuilders get muscles that are larger than normal by lifting weights," said lead author Kai Miller. "We get brain activity that's larger than normal by interacting with brain-computer interfaces. By using these interfaces, patients create super-active populations of brain cells."

Scientists from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the Brigham & Women's Hospital of Harvard Medical School have discovered a molecular pathway that works through the immune system to regenerate damaged kidney tissues and may lead to new therapies for repairing injury in a number of organs systems.

Indiana University School of Medicine researchers have identified a mechanism used by the tuberculosis bacterium to evade the body's immune system and have identified a compound that blocks the bacterium's ability to survive in the host.

A new study from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute and the University of Ottawa suggests that stem cells intentionally break their own DNA as a way of regulating tissue development. The study could dramatically change how researchers think about tissue development, stem cells and cancer.

A new study reveals that a common underlying mechanism is shared by a group of previously unrelated disorders which all cause complex defects in brain development and function.

A new way of using the genetic code has been created by researchers at the University of Cambridge, which allows proteins to be made with properties that have never been seen in the natural world. The breakthrough could eventually lead to the creation of new or "improved" life forms incorporating these new materials into their tissue.

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