1/30/2010 PERMALINK
Breakthrough Alert Show Number 2 Your briefing on the latest advances in the ultimate personal technology - human genetic & cyborg mods for regeneration and enhancement of your mind and body. The podcast version is ready for download now.

Bots controlled by neural networks evolve complex predator-prey behaviors at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, Ecole Polytechnique Federale.

A new technique for turning human embryonic and pluripotent stem cells into plentiful, functional endothelial cells, critical to the formation of blood vessels, has been developed by a team of scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College.

A new study in human cells has singled out a molecule that specifically directs immune cells to develop the capability to produce an allergic response. The signaling molecule, called thymic stromal lymphopoietin, is key to the development of allergic diseases such as asthma, atopic dermatitis (eczema) and food allergy. The study team was from the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

A group of proteins called chaperonins insure that proteins fold properly to carry out their assigned roles in the cells. Mis-folding can result in disease like Mad Cow. Now researchers from Baylor College of Medicine and Stanford University have discovered how Group II chaperonins close and open folding chambers to initate the folding event and to release the functional protein to the cell.

Scientists are reporting the first evidence from human research that blueberries, one of the richest sources of healthful antioxidants and other so-called phytochemicals, improve memory. The research was by scientists at the University of Cincinnati.

Your performance on a video game can be predicted simply by measuring the volume of specific structures in your brain find researchers at University of Illinois.

Researchers have reported a development that could allow old immune systems to be rejuvenated to function like they were young again. The technique involves treating aged mice with a macrophage-specific growth factor. It was developed by the Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres.

Transplanted neurons grown from embryonic stem cells can fully integrate into the brains of young animals, according to new research by a team of neuroscientists st Stanford Medical School.

Human growth hormone may not be a life extender after all. People profoundly deficient in human growth hormone (HGH) due to a genetic mutation appear to live just as long as people who make normal amounts of the hormone, finds a new study finds by researchers at the Department of Endocrinology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Researchers report development of a new magnesium diet supplement called magnesium-L-threonate (MgT), which is more effective than conventional oral supplements at boosting magnesium in the brain. When tested MgT led to significant enhancement of spatial and associative memory in both the young and aging rats. Neuroscientists at MIT and Tsinghua University in Beijing preformed the research.

In an acute viral infection, most of your T cells die in the fight, but a few become memory cells, allowing your immune system to respond better the next time. Now the molecule that defines which cells remember has been found by scientists at Emory University.

Power-generating rubber films that can harness natural body movements such as breathing and walking to power implants, wearware or pocket devices are being developed by engineers at Princeton University.

Adults aged over 70 years who are classified as overweight are less likely to die over a ten year period than adults who are in the 'normal' weight range, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Western Australia.

The world's largest laser system has uniformly compressed and superheated a fuel capsule, a major breakthrough on the road to practical fusion power -- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Progresses is being made towards developing the technologies necessary to map all the connectomes in your brain -- MIT.

By fusing bone marrow cells to embryonic stem cells to create hybrid cells with DNA from both the donor and recipient, immune rejection of embryonic stem cell therapies can be avoided without drugs say researchers from the University of Iowa and Department of Medical Genetics, Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

If you would like a new computer that locks you into a voluntary servitude where you are made to pay premium prices for your music, movies, shows, books and magazines. Where you lose your choice of web browser and media player and have to look at big holes in web pages, instead of being able to play the flash videos that normally are available there. Then Steve Jobs has an iPad for you. Once Apple was a path to escape exploitation, now it's out of the frying pan and into the fire.

A researcher from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine has invented a novel way to halt and even reverse rheumatoid arthritis. He developed an imitation of a suicide molecule that floats undetected into overactive immune cells responsible for the disease.

Be sure to check out the latest promo video for the HULC exoskeleton from Lockheed Martin. Run, crawl, leap, while easily carrying the Terminator's favorite monster gun.

Scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine have succeeded in the ultimate switch: transforming mouse skin cells in a laboratory dish directly into functional nerve cells with the application of just three genes.

HRS-I is a small, lightweight device that adheres to your chest and relays all your vital signs to a computer or mobile phone via wireless connection. The device was developed at the University of Tokyo's Advanced Institute of Wearable Environmental Information Networks.

What if a jury could decide a man's guilt through mind reading? What if reading a defendant's memory could betray their guilt? And what constitutes 'intent' to commit murder? The thought police are coming as new advances make them possible.

The birth of new neurons, a process called neurogenesis, needs to continuously keep occurring in your brain for it to function properly. A team of researchers at the European Centre for Brain Research has now demonstrating that the gene PC3/Tis21 (also known as BTG2) is essential to the process of neurogenesis.

Autophagy sequesters and digests aged organelles, damaged proteins and other components, which, if not disintegrated would threaten cell viability. Autophagy is an important process in keeping your cells young and researchers at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine in Barcelona have identify a new gene involved in controlling it.

Police plan to use military-style spy drones. If researchers keep developing WOMO (Weapons of Mass Oppression) that will allow a tiny elite to control a city. Then that is the sort of future we will all be forced to live in.

DARPA believes that replicating the semiconductor industry manufacturing model will enable other manufacturing sectors to experience similar economic booms. This kind of research can create a better future, unfortunately DARPA also funds a lot of WOMO.

Researchers discover a non-viral vector for gene therapy that works in post-mitotic tissues such as the retina and brain. Tufts University School of Medicine and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences.

If you are losing sleep, you are losing brain function, report researchers from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Amsterdam.

The vampire stories are true, an unspecified factor in the blood of young mice can reverse signs of aging in the circulatory system of older ones reports researchers at Harvard University.

When your brain looks for something common, it will often think it see it even when it isn't there, report researchers at Harvard Medical School.

Cancer stem cells have the ability to suppress your immune response against brain tumors say researchers at University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center.

The future of American manufacturing is moving into a brand new cloud, crowd, garage-fab paradigm, proclaims a fascinating article by Chris Anderson at Wired.

An international research consortium has found 13 new genetic variants that influence your blood glucose regulation, insulin resistance, and the function of insulin-secreting beta cells report researchers from the National Institutes of Health.

An impressive iPhone augmented reality bot called True City has launched that provides hyper-local, real-time information for 6 European cities. The bot was developed by Nike.

To understand how damaging to a civilization a bad meme can be, read this article to learn how the "War on Drugs" meme has brought about the destruction of the rule of laws in America.

That's all for this week. Check the text version for links to any story you want to learn more about. Be seeing you.

1/26/2010 PERMALINK
Welcome to Breakthrough Alert... ...your weekly briefing on the ultimate in personal technology, hu-mods tech, human genetic & cyborg modifications to regenerate and enhance your mind and body.

Download MP3.

Here are this week's breakthroughs:

Researchers find that giving someone a small dose of chlorophyll (Chla) or chlorophyllin (CHL), found in green leafy vegetables such as spinach, broccoli and kale, appears to reverse the effects of aflatoxin poisoning. Aflatoxin is a potent, naturally occurring carcinogenic mycotoxi. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Several new developments toward moving microelectronics into nexus phase of permanent implantable human/machine interfaces include:

Graduate student Cary Pint has come up with a way to transfer patterns of strongly aligned, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) from a substrate to another surface - any surface - in a matter of minutes. The process uses the same principal that lets a gecko walk up a wall, defying gravity with electrical attraction, the van der Waals force, between millions of microscopic hairs on its feet and the surface. The same substrate, with its catalyst particles still intact, can repeatedly be used to grow more nanotubes, almost like inking a rubber stamp. Rice University.

And researchers have produced 100 mm diameter graphene wafers, a key milestone in the development of graphene for next generation high-power, high-frequency electronic devices. Electro-Optics Center (EOC) Materials Division at Penn State.

In the cyborg realm, prosthetics maker iWalk will soon be offering the world's first actively powered human foot and ankle replacement part, called Powerfoot One. Their ultimate goal is to offer replace parts that are MORE capable than the originals.

NASA's Puffin concept for a low noise, electric Vertical Take Off & Landing (VTOL) Personal Air Vehicle seems the ultimate motion pod. More like putting on a flying suit than climbing into a vehicle. Were it not for our bad legal system memes that serve to drive personal aviation companies out of business, we could soon have these available.

In other breakthroughs this week:

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have used a natural communication system used by bacteria called quorum sensing to engineer bacteria that can flash in sync.

A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, in Germany, has managed to obtain 3D images of the vesicles and filaments involved in communication between neurons. The method is based on a novel technique in electron microscopy, which cools cells so quickly that their biological structures can be frozen while fully active.

Anthony Atala lecture at TEDMED on the state-of-the-art in engineering organs (now up on YouTube) is well worth watching. Podcast listeners, remember there are links to everything in the text version.

Scientists have determined the critical variable that has limited human running speed to the current 28 mph record held by Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. Offering an enticing insight into how humans might be modded to push up running speed to as high as 45 miles per hour, the theoretical maximum for a human-shaped creature. Southern Methodist University.

The Video Scout is a camera for examining the inside of your body. It features Quad LED illumination, superb image quality and easy product integration, all at a price that enables development of disposable medical imaging bots. Oh, and it is only about the size of an ant, making it also potentially useful for those bug-sized spy bots that the Air Force is working on. Researchers, don't work on WOMO, Weapons of Mass Oppression.

And in our effort to look for better civilization 2.0 memes, consider this story.

With the program shutting down, NASA has been trying to sell their clunky old space shuttle fleet to museums, but no museum has been willing to pay their $40 million price. So NASA is putting their shuttles fleet on sale. Sad isn't it.

I once found myself with a group of NASA engineers at a party and was bold enough to ask them how the shuttle became such a kludge. Their story is a sobering lesson in the bad memes found in government funded research.

The original NASA design for the shuttle, they informed me, was rather elegant. Calling for a smaller crew vehicle that took off at a high altitude from a 747-sized launch plane. Both shuttle and launch plane were completely reusable and this cut the cost of each launch drastically from rockets.

Congress, however, found the initial development cost for such a revolutionary system too much to swallow, so the launch plane got replaced by a strap-on rocket booster rocket.

Then the politicos decided that the shuttle should be able to carry military satellites into orbit, so part of program could be charged to the Pentagon's space budget.

NASA engineers were appalled to learn that the military sates were far too big for the existing shuttle design. Requiring that two larger and much more dangerous solid-fuel rocket boosters be strapped on to get the new pregnant shuttle into orbit.

Engineers had hoped to use only liquid fuel motors, which can be shut off or throttled back by the shuttle pilot if a problem occurred. In contrast, once the solid fuel boosters were lit. They could not be shut off no matter what happened until they burned out.

This Congressional change eliminated the ability of the astronauts to always make a safe landing in an emergency. Once again, astronauts were 'spam in a can' as Chuck Yeager described the early rocket launches that left pilots inside the capsules helpless if anything went wrong.

With two airplane-like vehicles, the original design was both far safer than a rocket and much less expensive per pound launched than disposable rockets. But after Congress got through 'helping' with the design, each launch was far more expensive than with a rocket and turned the shuttle system had been made into the deathtrap that would eventually kill a lot of brave Americans.

While we are on the subject of space, check out the link in the text to a clip of three small robots in space testing a system that will let many small satellites coordinate their activities. Developed by the MIT Spheres project, the system has me imagining a cheap, open source global Internet using tiny low-cost satellites put into orbit with a hydrogen space gun.

Rich people everywhere, want to be the most loved person on the planet? The one who gave humanity true freedom to communicate, impervious to all corporate filters and government censors. A half billion dollars could make such a system happen.

And here is a little more bad news on how research and politics don't mix so well.

Following the net leak of numerous conspiratorial emails from scientists
involved in trying to prove a human-cause for global warming. The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has now admitted another claim made by their group was a false piece of propaganda. This time it is their claim that the Himalayan glaciers will melt by 2035.

Here's a meme to remember:

Whenever a particular scientific finding might serve to justify a power grab by politicos, governments will pour money into the labs of scientists willing to work on this issue. And junk science is often the result as scientist seek to get the results politicos desire to keep the millions flowing into their labs.

The tragedy here is that researchers do need to develop ways to control climate.

Over the last billion years researchers have found solid evidence that the existence of New York City was probably only possible about 5% of the time. Most of the time, due to completely natural climate fluctuations, Manhattan Island was either under many meters of water or under many meters of glacial ice.

So now bad political memes have pushed scientists into proving human-causation, when human-causation simply doesn't matter. Climate mods will be necessary even if human-causation of global warming is completely bogus. Either we learn how to control the Earth's climate or natural fluctuation will eventually destroy most of the world's largest cities.

Subscribe to receive both the MP3 podcast and text version with links to source material for more details on any of our stories that you want to know more about.

1/19/2010 PERMALINK
New insights into T cells, your body's immune surveillance system, paves the way to making purified T cells for regenerative medicine. Babraham Institute.

1/19/2010 PERMALINK
Open access drug discovery database of properties of drugs and drug-like small molecules & their targets launches with 500,000 compounds listed. ChEMBLdb.

1/19/2010 PERMALINK
Fish oil given intravenously to patients in intensive care found to improve gas exchange, cut inflammatory chemicals and the length of hospital stay. University of Southampton.

1/19/2010 PERMALINK
New functions can develop in an enzyme if a single building block is deleted or replaced to let your body adapt to toxins without gene alterations. Uppsala University.

1/19/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers design new 'nanoburrs' able to cling to your damaged artery walls and slowly release compounds to fix the damage. MIT.

1/18/2010 PERMALINK
Bruce Sterling warns again about buying into the 'Rapture of the Geeks' transhumanism scam..

...people who are into transhumanism are emotionally committed. They're
not gonna be rationally argued out of their heartfelt desires, any more
than Creationists are gonna go kiss a chimpanzee on the lips and say
"Mom." ... Uploading's about as credible as going to heaven.

As Bruce suggests, we should keep things in perspective and avoid joining a cult. If you have ten or more years of natural lifespan left, the new gene hacking tools are likely to boost your life expectancy somewhat. But it is extremely doubtful you will be downloading your consciousness into a computer and living forever by 2030, as some have claiming. Don't wait for an AI to come along to solve all your problems for you, solve them yourself.

1/18/2010 PERMALINK
Scientists find burst of neural activity at transition between not seeing and seeing, revealing existence of a 'perception threshold.' Weizmann Institute.

1/18/2010 PERMALINK
Making bacon from pig stem cells in the lab to create the future of agriculture. Maastricht University.

1/18/2010 PERMALINK
Dumping legacy systems and crowd sourcing the best ideas. Unilever.

1/18/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers find new method of fixing broken proteins to treat genetic diseases. Fox Chase Cancer Center.

1/18/2010 PERMALINK
First successful use of expanded umbilical-cord blood units to treat leukemia. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.

1/18/2010 PERMALINK
"Applications of antiviral RNA interference (RNAi)" symposium, May 30 - June 4, 2010 in Sant Feliu de Guixols at the Costa Brava in Spain. European Science Foundation.

1/18/2010 PERMALINK
Gene variant that influences vitamin B6 metabolism identified identified as genetic risk factor for Parkinson's disease. Neurological Clinic of LMU and Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen.

1/18/2010 PERMALINK
Using a mechanism called "chaos control" a small, simple network with just a few connections can give a robot very diverse movement patterns. Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization.

1/18/2010 PERMALINK
New theory maintains that the properties of the Universe can be derived by thinking about the origin of complexity. University of California at Berkeley and Stanford University.

1/16/2010 PERMALINK
A nanotech contact lens that lets a diabetic see when her or she has a glucose problem by changing color. University of Western Ontario.

1/16/2010 PERMALINK
A cannon that puts payloads in orbit for 5% of the cost of a rocket, makes space colonization practical and cuts the extinction risk for our species. Quicklaunch.

1/15/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers identify three kinases, or proteins, that dismantle connections within brain cells causing memory loss. The Translational Genomics Research Institute.

1/14/2010 PERMALINK
Dark matter could make the Earth uninhabitable billions of years sooner than scientists previously thought. National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Pisa, Italy.

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Startup at university tech incubator beginning clinical trials for wireless body-monitoring system. University of California, Los Angeles.

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Stress induces signals that cause cells to develop into tumors, researchers have discovered. Yale University.

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Rather than slowly decaying or stagnating, the Y is constantly reinventing itself through continuous, wholesale renovation. Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Chat bot uses a growing database of over 20 million online conversations to seem more like a human. Cleverbot.

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Master regulatory protein KAP1 keeps all those ancient viruses that have inserted themselves into your DNA from killing you. Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
New computer vision system uses natural language to describe human actions and predict them based on the movements it recognizes. HERMES (Human Expressive Graphic Representation of Motion and their Evaluation in Sequences) the Computer Vision Centre of Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Carvacrol, a component of thyme oi, activates PPAR-gamma and suppresses the inflammatory COX-2 enzyme similar to red wine's resveratrol. Food Science & Nutrition, Nara Women's Universit

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Two asteroids zipping by near the Earth serve as reminders of how vulnerable to extinction our species will always be, until we colonize space. NASA's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Engineering mice to generate human macrophages, cytokines, dendritic cells and red blood cells. MIT

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Research suggests variation of cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) gene bring slower age-related memory decline & lower your risk of dementia. Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, Bronx, New York.

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Genomic and Personalized Medicine Conference to be held in Arlington, VA, USA from May 16 to 18, 2010. The Lancet

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Loss of smell function may signal the formation of the amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in brain that degrade neurons causing dementia. New York University School of Medicine and Langone Medical Center.

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Sox2, a protein that regulates stem cell formation, is involved in the spiral ganglion neuron development necessary for good hearing. University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.

1/13/2010 PERMALINK
Study of warriors with head injuries reveals brain areas responsible for judging emotions in others and planning socially appropriate responses. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland.

1/12/2010 PERMALINK
Study finds that a polymer scaffold seeded with stem cells restores large areas of missing bone better than treatment with the scaffold alone. Georgia Institute of Technology.

1/12/2010 PERMALINK
For each daily hour you devote to watching television you increase your risk of death from heart disease by 18% and from all causes by 11%. Physical Activity Laboratory in the Division of Metabolism and Obesity at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute in Victoria, Australia.

1/12/2010 PERMALINK
Moderate exercise found to lower your risk for cognitive impairment. University of Washington School of Medicine and Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System.

1/11/2010 PERMALINK
Lab tests show that mango causes cancer cells to undergo apotosis (programmed cell death) while leaving normal cells untouched. Texas A&M AgriLife.

1/11/2010 PERMALINK
Scientists say the tocotrienol form of vitamin E stops an enzyme from releasing fatty acids that kill neurons. Ohio State University

1/11/2010 PERMALINK
Low cost, open source desktop 3D printer can print any object in plastic for you. MakerBot Industries.

1/10/2010 PERMALINK
The hormone leptin can effect the activity of a gene known as IGFBP2 in the liver to correcting diabetes. Rockefeller University.

1/10/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers create magnetic "ferropaper" micromotors that could drive surgical bots small enough to travel around inside your body fixing problems. Purdue University.

1/10/2010 PERMALINK
The molecular security system that protects your cells from potentially harmful DNA discovered. University of Minnesota

1/08/2010 PERMALINK
Asia's doctors using stem cells to save 1,000's of patients daily that are doomed to death in the west by gestapo-like medical regulators. Our medical regulators doubtless kill far more by delaying promising treatments than they save by keeping deadly treatments off the market. However, one death from a bad drug will cause a media frenzy, while thousands of lives lost daily from drug delays are ignored by the media and thus by politicians. McLaughlin-Rotman Centre for Global Health

1/08/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers show that nutrient mix they have developed can improve memory in dementia patients by stimulating growth of new brain connections. MIT.

1/07/2010 PERMALINK
Research want to make markets far more efficiency by letting agent bots serve as proxies to negotiate all our deals and purchases for us. Imperial College London

1/07/2010 PERMALINK
Biologists have developed an efficient way to genetically modify human embryonic stem cells using bacterial artificial chromosomes to swap in genes. University of California - San Diego.

1/07/2010 PERMALINK
Ordering your life around the premises and promises of the singularity cult is unwise. In 1979 Robotics Age Magazine asked many of the world's top A.I. and robotics researchers how long it would be before a robot could be verbally programmed to do any job on an assembly line a human can do. The answers averaged 11 years. Yet, 31 years later we are still awaiting a bot that can be easily programmed to function in such a semi-structured environment. Let alone assist us in the far less structured environments of our homes and offices. Calculate the permutations of the roughly 100 billion neurons in your brain, each with an average 7,000 connections to other neurons, and you will find that your own brain is capable of creating more unique pathways than there are elemental particles in the visible universe. Rather than joining the quixotic quest for finding salvation from singularity's smarter-than-human god-machine. More accomplishment and satisfaction will come from seeking better ways and memes for harnessing the incredible power of your own mind to learn more about all that you see around you.

1/07/2010 PERMALINK
Over 30 billion solar systems with a life-friendly configuration similar to our sun's system are available for colonization across our galaxy. Ohio State University.

1/07/2010 PERMALINK
Bot assembles real-time local news feed for your mobile device by constantly watching local Twitter tweets, blogs and online public records. Nozzl Media.

1/07/2010 PERMALINK
The lessons you can learn from studying cultures where people have the longest, disability-free lifespans. A TED talk by Dan Buettner.

1/07/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers testing cell phone electro-magnetic exposure effects report that it somehow seems to protect aging mice from memory decline. University of South Florida Health.

1/06/2010 PERMALINK
Sharing a hospital room with another patient dramatically increases your risk of being infect by a hospital 'super bug'. Queen's University.

1/06/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers discover a molecular mechanism that determines body weight offering a pathway to the prevention of obesity. Mayo Clinic, University of Iowa, University of Connecticut and New York University

1/05/2010 PERMALINK
The Air Force's micro-air bot assassin, Project Anubis, is now completed and ready to give individual troops their very own mini-Predator. AeroVironment

1/05/2010 PERMALINK
More evidence that so-called 'junk DNA' plays an important role in the genome, such as influencing when genes are switched on. University of Nottingham.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Can you get the proven lifespan extension effects of calorie restriction by just restricting your intake of a single amino acid called methionine? Complutense University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain. ~ More about this research.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Blocking inflammation receptor kills breast cancer stem cells. University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers learn how to tap into communications between bacterial in order to improving chronic wound healing. Binghamton University, State University of New York.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers develop a 'cocktail' of different nano-particles that can work in concert within your bloodstream to locate, adhere to & kill tumors. University of California in San Diego

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
A molecular receptor protein pivotal to the action of male hormones also plays a crucial role in your body's ability to heal, report scientists. University of Rochester Medical Center.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Research finds muscles atrophy with age because of damage to the mitochondria in muscle cells caused by free radicals like reactive oxygen species. Work could lead to new therapies to halt this natural process. ~ Sam and Ann Barshop Institute for Longevity and Aging Studies at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Understanding the cellular mechanisms that modulate lifespan and promote 'youthfulness'. Cellular Stress and Aging Symposium at the The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine on January 8, 2010.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
More on the new wireless brain sensor to computer interface with the ability to convert thoughts back into speech. Boston University Speech Lab and Neural Signals

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
A fictional look at a furture shaped by humods technologies White Swan by Jason Stoddard

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Your specialized mirror neurons that made the development of human technology, culture and civilization possible. A TEDTalk by neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers find that a single atom of calcium controls the motility required for bacterial to infect a host offering a new path for disabling them. University of North Carolina School of Medicine.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Scientists discover the relationship between 2 blood proteins plays a pivotal role in staving off age-related macular degeneration. University College London

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
The top ten robots of the decade GoRobotics.net

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
You've heard of Neanderthals but what about Boskops, the extinct superhumans with brains 30% bigger and average IQ's 53% higher than yours? What Happened to the Hominids Who Were Smarter Than Us?

Boskop's brain size is about 30 percent larger than our own - that is, a 1,750 cc brain to our average of 1,350 cc. And that leads to an increase in the prefrontal cortex of a staggering 53 percent. If these principled relations among brain parts hold true, then Boskops would have had not only an impressively large brain but an inconceivably large prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is closely linked to our highest cognitive functions. It makes sense out of the complex stream of events flowing into the brain; it places mental contents into appropriate sequences and hierarchies; and it plays a critical role in planning our future actions. Put simply, the prefrontal cortex is at the heart of our most flexible and forward-looking thoughts.

The important lesson here is that hominids even smarter than us have suffered extinction, and so will we if we keep using the old order's primitive religions and philosophies as our guide posts. Without a much more robust set of memes premature extinction will also be our fate.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers report that vitamin C stops and even reverses accelerated aging disease in a mouse model. Centre de Recherche en Cancerologie in Quebec, Canada.

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers find that G6PD protein that produces the antioxidant NAPDH can prevent death of your pancreatic beta cells, the root cause of diabetes. Harvard University

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
MyoD helps your stem cells proliferate in response to muscle injury Case Western Reserve University

1/04/2010 PERMALINK
During last interglacial global warming, sea level peaked at least 6.6 meters higher than today. All the argument over human causation of climate changes is superfluous. Our planet's climate has always naturally fluctuated dramatically over time. Between periods that were much warmer and colder than currently. If we want to avoid the loss of all our coastal cities to future sea level rises or northern cities to future glacial advances. Then we must eventually develop technologies for cheaply and efficiently controlling our planet's climate. Fortunately, advances in both nanotech and biotech should soon make this easily achievable. ~ Princeton University and Harvard University

1/03/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers finding of new ways to keep stem cells 'forever young' during implantation promises a 'new era' in tissue and organ regeneration. University of Hong Kong and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1/03/2010 PERMALINK
Prions, proteins devoid of DNA or RNA that cause Mad Cow & other neuro-degenerative diseases, are found to be capable of Darwinian evolution. The Scripps Research Institute

1/03/2010 PERMALINK
Researchers have successfully used RNA interference to turn off multiple liver genes, an advance towards fixing malfunctioning livers & other organs. MIT and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals.

1/03/2010 PERMALINK
The future of brain-controlled devices. CNN.

1/02/2010 PERMALINK
Scientists identify new gene variants able to control your lipid metabolism. Helmholtz Zentrum Munchen.

1/02/2010 PERMALINK
Neuroscientists discover a way to observe how your brain designs it own circuits to make possible conscious thought. Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions

1/02/2010 PERMALINK
Carbon nanotubes show promise for high-speed gene sequencing to allow personalized diagnosis & customized treatment based on each individual's genome. Arizona State University.

1/02/2010 PERMALINK
'Daemon' and 'Freedom' author Daniel Suarez (aka Leinad Zeraus) explains how smart bots can be used as the ultimate Weapon of Mass Oppression (WOMO). We previously posted the audio of this talk to the Long Now Foundation, here is the video. This is required listing/viewing for achieving a full understanding of the existing threat matrix.

1/02/2010 PERMALINK
Synthetic biologists working on artificial life forms have developed a CAD system called Tinkercell for redesigning life much faster and easier. University of Washington in Seattle